“Ishmael:
An adventure of the Mind and Spirit”
Daniel
Quinn
TOPICS/EVENTS
1) My
book was like nothing I’ve ever read before. Its existentialist view allowed me
to open my mind more to comprehend these grand concepts about life in general and
human nature. The protagonist, a young student in search of a teacher, finally
comes across an ad on a newspaper by a teacher seeking a human who is
interested in ‘saving the world’ as it stated. They come into contact with each
other and he teaches him life-long important lessons about saving the planet,
mankind and other species. He teaches that has ‘Taker’ humans we must learn to
change our evil ways or perish with the rest. We are slowly destroying the
world without realizing. He teaches that we are trapped in our own cultural
prison and the sad thing is that most realize this without caring much about
the facts but concentrate on achieving power in this prison to have more
control over it than anyone else, rather than actually changing our horrible
lifestyles. He teaches about the different ways to live and evolution; theory
of how man came to be. He gives man hope and gives us exactly what we need to
survive and thrive.
2) My
author chose to write about this specific topic for obvious reasons. The world
or at least the world for MAN as we know it is quickly coming to an end. Why? It
all comes down to our increasing human population and human interaction with
other species. Over-population leads to over-production which becomes a
never-ending cycle. We are the cause of our own problem. The way we have chosen
to live for the past couple thousand years from the agricultural revolution and
on, is the selfish way categorizing us as the ‘Takers’ in the world. We take
what we want, what we need and what we think
we need. In doing so, we are slowly supporting the extinction of various
species in our environment. We have been doing this for years, killing off
anything interfering with our evil ways and not minding the ‘Leavers’ of the
planet and our precious innocent animals. The ‘Leaver’ would be categorized as the
peaceful, mindful people who abide by the natural law of nature which is: take
what you need and leave the rest alone. He wrote this book to alert us about our
selfish ways, just in case it wasn’t obvious, and how it eventually WILL backfire
and have a negative effect on only us, but it’s what we are asking for living
the way we’ve been for generations and generations. It’s sort of like a reality
check.
3) Well,
Eddie, Izamar and I walked into Mrs. Byrne’s classroom and said, “Mrs. Byrne,
we need thin books.” So she appointed us to her small in-class library and
showed us multiple books giving us insight on each but we mostly just cared
about the length. Then she grabbed a book in the quickness and said, “Oh,
Ishmael! This is a really good book!”
We looked through the pages and realized it was sort of long and we all called
skips. Then she mentioned it was an existentialist book and I re-considered. The
bell rang and by this time Eddie and Izamar had found their books and feeling defeated
I grabbed Ishmael. Then I told myself to stop being lazy and read this book
because it was a topic within my interest and I knew I would not regret it, so
I did. The minute I opened it and read the first Chapter I knew I could not go
wrong. This was my type of book! The thing about this book that made me want to
continue reading was the fact that it tackled such incomprehensible aspects of
life that many refuse to explore. I could EASILY relate to this because many of
these questions I have asked myself for years and they were answered in this
book. I finished the book yesterday and I am extremely proud of having made
this decision. Thank you Mrs. Byrne, I shall return to you for more of your
amazing books.
4) Yes,
definitely. The book’s ideas and themes were realistic. The realest of the
realest. It was all there just waiting for someone to piece it all together,
and that’s exactly what Daniel Quinn did. I made connections with history and
human interactions with the world and with humans themselves. After reading
this book, everything just makes sense now. How he explains human nature and
how we think and react, it was truly astonishing.
PEOPLE
1) The
author chose the average young human being confused about the world and
extremely curious and caring for the most part attempting to solve an issue we’ve
had at hand for so long without anyone clearly doing anything about it. The
fact that I could replace the main character with myself was all I needed to
understand the complexity of this book. A real person with the same thoughts as
I and reacting how I would react. The tone is irritated and angry, not with any
single person specifically, but with the struggles of life in general and the
nature of these ideas and how ignorant we have been since we came into
existence has homo sapiens. These
choices prove that the author wants us to relate to the protagonist and place
us in the inquiry stage as in: What will we do next?
2) The
protagonist, I never quite got a hold of his name however it is irrelevant, was
a determined man in search of answers about life and how exactly is the correct way to live it. He never gave
up in his search and did not quit until he found exactly what he was looking
for. The entire book was a conversation between him and his teacher Ishmael. The
book doesn’t give much physical description of the character but mainly sticks
to their actual personalities because that is what actually matters in the book.
As fictional characters, I would describe them through both direct and indirect
characterization. I would stick to indirect characterization as the author did
due to the fact that it is important to be able to make assumptions about
characters because in real life that is exactly what we do therefore it can be found
in literature as well.
3) The
fact that they have such open minds about realities and increased
knowledge-based judgments makes them interesting enough to write about. They
are sort of like interpreters to the things we already know and things we are
still trying to figure out as a society and distinguishing the difference
between what is right and wrong.
STYLE
1) Yes,
he utilized foreshadowing when the teacher was taken away to a town a couple
miles North because this enabled the reader to infer that the relationship
between Ishmael, the teacher and the protagonist was slowly beginning to fade
and would possibly come to an end by uncontrollable life factors. He still
managed to utilize this journalistic style throughout the entire novel mainly
because the entire thing was a collection of thoughts and connections about the
world.
2) The
author definitely utilizes lengthy descriptions about ideas and mise en abymes, a French term referring
to a story within a story but the same principle does not apply to people. He
focuses mainly on dialogue between the same two people the whole book. These
have positive effects on the book in the way that if the author spent more time
giving us lengthy descriptions on the places and more people we encountered, it
would simply be a waste of time and completely irrelevant to the facts and the
point of the book.
3) To
create tone and mood, the author heavily portrays emotions. He makes it very
clear when a character is in pain, confusion and especially anger. These
emotions are important because we need them in order to evaluate ourselves as
humans and exactly how we react to real life situations.
4) I
think the author’s attitude toward the subject was obviously very strong in the
sense that he felt the need to educate a population through a well-structured novel.
His attitude toward the characters is just a self-evaluation of ourselves to
prove a point. His attitude toward the audience would be much more sort of
angered but still patient. His overall attitude is positive filled with hope
for humanity even if the reader does not believe so himself. His great task of
teaching us something so important for our nature tells us everything about his
attitude regardless of any misinterpretations by any mistaken readers.
5) The
author offers countless references. The novel includes everything from religious
to science aspects of his views. He mentions passages from the Holy Bible,
theories of Evolution, parables, laws, interpersonal connections, people to
people interactions, and ethnic/cultural/religious history accounts. Within
these, they vary from a range of long periods of time and some dating back to
B.C. as well as A.D. of course. Yes, it matter MAJORLY because it proves that
he took REAL information to give us knowledge on our inner selves and our
ancestors that we may have never paid attention to. Without these multiple
references and facts, this book would be meaningless because it would not be
using things we can actually relate to and it would become a book placed in the
Fiction category.
ENDURING MEMORY
I expect to remember
the entire novel for as long as I live. Mainly, I will carry out the many
quotes and references in the story pertaining to life and human beings in
general. On page 201, the protagonist makes a statement about the past, which I
can connect to something we have studied in this class. Does the past really
matter? In terms of learning from our mistakes yes yet he claims, “Mother
Culture says that this is as it should be. There’s nothing in the past for us. The
past is dreck. The past is something to be put behind us, something to be
escaped from.” This is one point of view which makes sense and just reminds us
that it IS behind us and we cannot simply expect to continue to live in it.
Many are far too obsessed or personally traumatized by their own pasts that
they cannot seem to continue forward, and it is sad because they do not
acknowledge the fact that they are wasting their time trying to change
something that already happened and can never be changed. This quote serves as
a reminder to move forward and leave the damaging things in the past where they
belong. Another famous quote makes a reference to the way of how peoples live, meaning to the cultures of
the world. “…but I’ve read enough of it to know that the Zuni don’t think their
way is the way for everyone, and that the Navajo don’t think their way is the
way for everyone. Each of them has a way that works well for them. And that way that works well for
them is what they teach their children.” This is important when it comes to
understanding world cultures and beliefs within our own cultures. It is
important to understand how things get passed down in a community from
generation to generation in order to avoid our key defect-ignorance. The third,
which I feel is one of the most important talks about the type of world we are
living in unconsciously. “I’m afraid it’s a cause to which almost none of
humanity will subscribe. White or colored, male or female, what the people of
this culture want is to have as much wealth and power in the Taker prison as
they can get. They don't give a damn that it’s destroying the world.” Again, it
illustrates our selfishness in the world and how we are not really aware of
what we are doing or why. We do
things simply because we imitate our ancestors, we think this is the correct
way to live when in reality it is killing millions and we need to change our
minds because ultimately, we can’t change the world if we can’t change
ourselves.
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