Ishmael Essay
Hyun Park 1/31/14
Fairfax HS per 6 Ms. Antoine
Ishmael Analysis The novel Ishmael written by Daniel Quinn is not like any other novels in the library. The story begins when a nameless narrator reads a newspaper ad that tells about a teacher seeking a pupil to save the world. The story unravels as the mentor and the student discuss “how things came to be this way” in this world and humankind’s inevitable destiny. What makes this story most interesting is that the mentor is not human, but a gorilla named Ishmael, who can transfer thoughts telepathically. Moreover, the gorilla is the more intelligent being in the story, and not the human. Why was a gorilla specifically chosen to be a mentor? The question is answered as Quinn transforms a gorilla into a wise, witty antagonist. It all starts when the narrator steps into the room and finds a gorilla inside a cage. At first, he is just perplexed that a gorilla would be so intelligent as to desire a student. As the story progresses, the narrator accepts Ishmael not simply as an animal, but his mentor. By the time Ishmael has taught all that he knows, he even considers the narrator as a friend. The most important characteristic that Ishmael has is that he is a non-human. In order to criticize the ways humans take advantage and wage war against the nature, the mentor would have to be non human. If it was a human mentor, it would deem him a hypocrite and would be strange if he was not just a little bit biased. The reason why a bird or a fish was not chosen as a mentor is because no other living animals on Earth possess the similarity and knowledge that humans possess. This intellectual advance of apes puts them closest to the humans without actually being a human.
That way, it is possible for
Fairfax HS per 6 Ms. Antoine
Ishmael Analysis The novel Ishmael written by Daniel Quinn is not like any other novels in the library. The story begins when a nameless narrator reads a newspaper ad that tells about a teacher seeking a pupil to save the world. The story unravels as the mentor and the student discuss “how things came to be this way” in this world and humankind’s inevitable destiny. What makes this story most interesting is that the mentor is not human, but a gorilla named Ishmael, who can transfer thoughts telepathically. Moreover, the gorilla is the more intelligent being in the story, and not the human. Why was a gorilla specifically chosen to be a mentor? The question is answered as Quinn transforms a gorilla into a wise, witty antagonist. It all starts when the narrator steps into the room and finds a gorilla inside a cage. At first, he is just perplexed that a gorilla would be so intelligent as to desire a student. As the story progresses, the narrator accepts Ishmael not simply as an animal, but his mentor. By the time Ishmael has taught all that he knows, he even considers the narrator as a friend. The most important characteristic that Ishmael has is that he is a non-human. In order to criticize the ways humans take advantage and wage war against the nature, the mentor would have to be non human. If it was a human mentor, it would deem him a hypocrite and would be strange if he was not just a little bit biased. The reason why a bird or a fish was not chosen as a mentor is because no other living animals on Earth possess the similarity and knowledge that humans possess. This intellectual advance of apes puts them closest to the humans without actually being a human.
That way, it is possible for