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ClaireSageJorgensen

ClaireSageJorgensen

Ishmael

 

I had little to no clue what the book, Ishmael, was going to entail when I started it. Even after reading the entirety of the book I still have a very difficult to describing it. It opens with a man looking for a teacher to help him understand how to save the world. After answering an ad in the newspaper he finds himself in an almost bare room with his teacher, a gorilla. The gorilla is named Ishmael. The rest of the book is their lessons and conversations together. The novel tries to explain how and why the human race and the earth got to where it is now. One way Ishmael tries to explain is asking the narrator to tell him how the universe was created. When describing how the planet was created, people usually start with the big bang and describe how evolution got to us. Ishmael says this is one of the human races biggest downfalls. We end the story with the evolution of us. We tell the story thinking that we are the end result and prize of evolution. Ishmael tells the narrator that thinking that the earth is here for us and nothing else is a dangerous mistake. If we continue to treat the earth like it is ours we will fall. Ishmael uses many metaphors and hypotheticals that really switched on a lot of lights for me. I definitely recommend this book to anyone interesting in philosophy, history, and our environment. This has been an important book to me and I hope more people will read it.