Ishmael An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

The ISH-ue• Narrator sees an ad

• Ad says “Teacher Seeks Pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.”• Narrator has always wanted to save the world

• Believes ad is bogus

• Goes to an office building to apply• Sees a giant gorilla

• Gorilla tells narrator about his life and how he came to be intelligent• Speaking telepathically

The Creation Myth Pt. 1 Ishmael, the gorilla, tells the narrator

that every culture has a creation myth Ishmael asks the narrator about the

human creation myth Narrator tells about the big bang theory Ishmael says there are three parts to

the creation myth Creation, humans, agricultural boom

THE CREATION MYTH PT. 2

• Ishmael says if he asked a pink blob three million years ago what their creation myth was they would say it ended with Jellyfish

• Creation did not end with Jellyfish• Creation does not end with man• Humans believe that the universe was created for them

Law of Human Behavior

There’s a law for all thingsEx. Law of Gravity

Law of Human BehaviorBroken by modern civilizationIshamel tells of the A B C’s

THE A B C’SNo hierarchy in this society A’s eat C’s B’s eat A’s C’s eat B’s

They have a law Law keeps everyone happy Everyone follows it

Figuratively someone breaks the law (How would you discover what the law was?)

Three guidelines “What makes their society work well” “What they never do” “What he did that they never do” (Quinn 117)

*The A B C’s relative to

humans

*Plants = A’s

*Plant eaters = B’s

*Predators = C’s

*Left over from predators (C’s) return to the earth to feed A’s

*Worked for billions of years

*“Man is exempt from this law. The gods never meant man to be bound by it.” (Quinn 119)

*Humans indirectly destroying the world

Ecology of the ABC’sAny species will want to expand up

until the food supply can handleHumans break the law

◦“Kill off everything you can’t eat”◦“Kill of anything that eats what you

eat”◦“Kill off anything that doesn’t feed

what you eat” (Quinn 131) “One species exempting itself from this law

has the same ultimate effect as all species exempting themselves” (Quinn 132)

The Gods Gods didn’t know how to rule

They ate from the tree of knowledge They learned who should live and who should die

Humans were created Humans were to eat from the tree of life

Humans instead ate from the tree of knowledge Instead we simply believed we knew good from evil but we do not Humans believe we are equal to the Gods and can assume the

role

Cain & Abel

• Cain and Abel fought because of different views• Cain

• Agricultural (Taker)

• Abel• Hunter Gatherer (Leaver)

• “God is on our side. He loves us herders but hates those murderous tillers of the soil from the north” (Quinn 174)

Characters

Ishmael• Gorilla captured at youth – spent years in

captivity• Grows to be more self aware• Walter Sokolow encourages his intellectual

growth through their telepathic communication

• Becomes a teacher whose focus is on how to save the world

• Tries to understand why humans feel that they have to dominate the world (Takers), rather than be content with being a more primitive culture (Leavers).

*The Narrator

*Spent his youth in search of a teacher interested in teaching him how to save the world

*Ishmael's fifth student and the only one who isn't completely defeated at the end of his instruction

*Open-minded and maintains his desire to save the world, though he often finds it difficult to maintain a sense of hope

*See’s Ishmael as not only a teacher but a friend

*Unsure of his ability to be a teacher after Ishmael's death

Walter Sokolow

• Rescues Ishmael from a traveling carnival and helps him educate himself and becomes his first true friend

Rachael Sokolow

• Takes care of Ishmael after her father dies

Mr. Partridge• Walters butler who still cares for Ishmael after he leaves the Sokolow estate