Analysis Of Ishmael

Ishmael Leseur is the main character in “Don’t Call Me Ishmael”, a book by Michael Gerard Bauer. He courageously steps up to Year Nine only to be bullied for his name, embarrassed in front of his first love, and to become a complete social outcast. This leads to him naming Year Nine as “the toughest, the weirdest, the most embarrassingly awful and the best year” of his life.

War is devastating and tragic. It affects the daily lives of the people that are involved in the war. In the excerpt from, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, it displays a man who is dreaming about war. When the man wakes up, he lays sweating on the ground, remembering the painful memories that the dream has brought. In the end, the man realizes that from now on he will have to live in three worlds; his dreams, the experience of his new life, and memories from the past. Meanwhile, in the image, “In Times of War” by The New York Times, there is an angel on a cloud looking over the dreadful war. Then the angel walks away because the view of people dying makes it sick. The theme of the excerpt A Long Way Gone, and the image, “In Times of War,” is that the war brings death, seriously injured, and psychologically broken people.

A big part of Ishmael’s problem with humans is that we’re selfish with our planet. We’d rather destroy our planet to benefit our needs than try to tame our requirements. “You’ve been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you.” (Page 61) Throughout the book, Ishmael brings up humans using the world to their own advantage and not caring what or who gets hurt in the process. I feel like this is one of Quinn’s greatest examples of what we’re blind to. We don’t realize that our oceans, our forests and wildlife and our environment aren’t actually ours. This is another example of humans thinking they’re the top of the ecosystem and using the world because it “belongs to us.” We realize that we’re ruining habitats and using an excessive amount of resources, but we do nothing to stop it. We ruin our world but don’t get that we need our world. We’ve created a cycle that’s holding us captive but we don’t know how to reverse it.

To the Takers point of view, the world before them seemed to be chaotic, messy, and in need of some straightening out. The basic premise of the Takers philosophy is that man is in conflict with nature, and this position at the apex of evolution can only be maintained by completely and totally conquering the world. An example of this is when Ishmael explains, “We’re destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it” (Quinn 130). The Takers that the natural law does not apply to man and his science and technology offer protection from the hunger, sickness, and certain death, in which all other species in the wild suffer from. Therefore man is free to act with malice toward the world without any consequences from these actions in which he does.

The apparent success of the Taker culture is merely an illusion, according to Quinn. Until humanity stops insisting on taking part in a story contrary to the natural and unbreakable laws of nature, we are destined to see civilization crash down upon us; the plot will invariably end in disaster.

As much as humans don’t want to admit it, the world wasn’t solely created for us. The novel, Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn has given us an insight on how the world has been treated by man and how it could end. In a time where the world is being destroyed we need to step up and protect the earth from total destruction.

The book says how we were put on this earth to conquer it and make it our own paradise, but because of us being imperfect beings, we are bound to ruin it. On the contrary, it is argued that man’s only flaw is that we do not know how we “ought to live.” The answer is provided by the ways of nature, but as takers, we refuse to abide by the laws of nature and live as civilized beings in no need of the gods to tell us how to live. It is argued that the beliefs of man as being inherently flawed is due to our destructive behavior. We do not give ourselves enough credit for being human. Man is perfectly capable of living in harmony with the earth without destroying it if we took responsibility for our treatment of it. This has to do with the inherent goodness of man. Humans, before the time of modern civilization, did live in harmony with the earth and took only what they needed from it, just like the animals now. Mankind taking over the world used to not even be part of the question, but then evolution continued and we somehow started to believe we have a purpose here. To rule the earth. We think we are building up the world, but we are actually destroying

Our agriculture systems destroy vast amounts of habitat and food for other species the world over. The way we grow our crops since the beginning has essentially been nothing more than clearing whatever was there to make room for what we want. This leads to the denial of food to animals, the destruction of their food sources, and the subsequent elimination of competitors for the food we desire. We cover our crops in herbicides to destroy weeds and pesticides to kill insects. We have killed animals such as wolfs that have attacked our livestock. Ishmael and the Narrator came to consensus on the Law of Limited Competition. Other members of the community of life may compete with each other, but it is only man who enters into full-out war. In the effort to create human comforts, we inflict tragedy upon almost all others. Just as it was outlined in the book, we have eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We feel specially ordained to choose what lives and dies. What thrives and survives. Moreover, that kind of story violates the most fundamental values of life here or

Ishmael is about a young scientist that can telepathically speak with a gorilla named Ishmael who will soon to be the teacher. Ishmael taught himself his education when he was able to talk to his owner telepathically to get him books. Ishmael helps the narrator realize that we can’t just take whatever we want from the environment and all of its resources. The narrator sees Ishmael for days in a row but ends up having to miss days to see him. He then finds Ishmael at a traveling carnival to finish the lesson they had. The narrator has an idea of buying Ishmael from the carnival owners and finally when he got enough money to buy the gorilla, Ishmael dies.

"Come with me if you want to live," was all that Arnold Schwarzenegger said in his movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and after reading Daniel Quinn's masterpiece Ishmael, one might well receive the impression Quinn echoes such sentiments. Few books have as much relevancy in this technological, ever-changing world as Ishmael.

Ismael is novel that pointe it in that the human need to change their way of life and they have to stop what they doing to the world. According to Ishmael the human destroyed the world and kill the animals like the gorillas. Ishmael is gorilla he said the men destroying the world and they have to stop doing what they do. He and the narrator are describing everything in the world what happen in the world right now. They make the people to parts takers and leavers. Philosophy of this story that the people have to know how the other things around them look to them. The human think they are the best in this world, but Ishmael said that the human is destroying the world. Each them in the book has purpose to say it in the book. For example,

Bang! Bang! “At that instant several gunshots, which sounded like thunder striking the tin-roofed houses, took over town. The sound of guns was so terrifying it confused everyone” (Beah 23). In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys his amazing journey through war and hardship as a child soldier. Sierra Leone--a country on the western coast of Africa--was embroiled in a bloody civil war in the 1990’s. Battles multiplied as bloodshed abounded and as a child in Sierra Leone Ishmael Beah was forced to survive, find food, and face unimaginable dangers. Running from the battle front was also a routine ordeal. At age 13 Beah was captured by the military and brainwashed into using guns and drugs. As a child soldier he perpetrated and witnessed a great deal of violence. At 15 he was rescued and taken to a rehabilitation center. With time and continual treatment, Beah was able to recover, to some extent, and reconnect with his Uncle Tommy who adopted him. He was later chosen to speak to the United Nations in New York City about his experiences as a child soldier. When he returned to Sierra Leone, war broke out throughout in the city where he lived, causing many deaths including his Uncle Tommy. Eventually Beah escaped Sierra Leone and he managed to reach New York City, where he began a new life. Through Ishmael Beah’s book A Long Way Gone, he conveys a central theme of having to survive, at a young age, through the hardships of war with the use of imagery.

People act like enemies of the world because they only allow for themselves. In other words, they kill other animals if they pose a threat to their growth, like the land is ours and ours alone – not to be shared. On the other hand, people have recently begun to think more about the destruction we are causing on the planet and initiating a change within their communities. In this way, they are working with the world, rather than against it.

In chapter four and five, when the boys stole food from others that did not have much, I believe it must have been a very difficult decision for the boys. Especially, because they knew what it was like not to have food. I also believe that the boys were hesitant when stealing the food but they knew that if they did not, they may not survive. Because of the situation that the boys were in, I do not see stealing the food was unavoidable. On page 27, when Ishmael said, “We got hungrier day after day, to the point that our stomachs were hurting and our visions blurred at times.” shows that the boys lack of nutrition was beginning to impair their visions and beginning to bring pain to their stomachs. The conditions were very tough for everyone

In Chapter 9, the author and Ishmael agreed that the fall of Adam was written from the Leavers’ perspective, since the knowledge of good and evil is forbidden to Adam. If it was written from the Takers’ perspective, we would force Adam to eat the fruit and become knowledgeable. We are so confident in ourselves that we always blindly believe that we are right, that we are special, that we are superior to other species, and that the world is made for us. This overconfidence is the fundamental reason why we caused the deterioration of the ozone layer, the extinction of other species, and ocean and air pollution.