Ishmael, a Talking Gorilla

In the book, Ishmael, author Daniel Quinn addresses several social issues from the viewpoint of a talking gorilla named Ishmael. Ishmael's goal in the story is to teach his pupil, a human being, how to save the world. Ishmael and his student spend hours discussing what is wrong with the way humans view the world. According to Ishmael, humans are constantly and unnecessarily destroying animals as well as the Earth's fragile ecosystem.

Ishmael believes that the world is divided into two categories of living things: the Leavers and the Takers. The Takers are Americans, Europeans, and other races that use agriculture as opposed to hunting and gathering their food. The Leavers are animals and people like the Hopi Indians who only kill animals when they need them for food, as opposed to killing for sport or for some other selfish reason. Ishmael thinks that only humans view a herd of animals as something that belongs to the human race as opposed to viewing a herd as something that is part of the family of living things which the earth has

raised and which have a right to he here. For example, Ishmael points out that animals hunt only what they eat but will occasionally "kill in self-defense, or when they merely feel threatened" (126), Ishmael distinguishes this from Taker culture, which kills off everything, believing that "the more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world" (132). Ishmael explains that the Takers have been expanding their food

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orld is competition which should be exterminated (132). However, while people are keen on exterminating everything around them, they are also wiping out entire populations of species. And, as each additional species disappears, the planet is forever altered by the absence of that species as well as the loss of the things which that species contributed to the ecosystem. So another problem with humans' self-image is that it is shortsighted. People continue to act as if there will be no consequences for killing off so many other species. Ishmael's view of people suggests that people are headed into dangerous territory because, by killing species after species, Man is destroying the diversity of the species living on the planet. Yet the planet needs many diverse species to survive future changes. Therefore, although people are attempting to control their food supply, in the long run they may actually be causing their food supply to diminish. Ishmael thinks that people's tampering with the natural evolution of plants and animals could one day be people's undoing. At the end of the story, Ishmael dies of pneumonia, and his student is left to contemplate the meaning of life without his gorilla teacher. The issue that the studen

Category: Literature - I