Ishmael: Humans Held Captive Essay

Narratives about captivity have often intrigued readers in Western culture. Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano’s stories helped pave the way for stereotypes within both European and white culture; teaching Europeans to see Native Americans as cruel and allowing whites to see the evil in the American slave market. In both “A Narrative of the Captivity” and “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,” Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano share their individual stories of being kidnapped and enslaved. Though the two narrators share similarities in their personal accounts of being held captive, either individual’s reaction sheds light on the true purpose of both Rowlandson and Equiano’s writing.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn is an book which discusses many things, most specifically how humans see and treat the world around them. The book categorizes humans into two distinct categories, takers and leavers. There are many themes which are used throughout the book, such as captivity, identity, and evolution. One of the most important things discussed throughout the book is the environment, how humans treat it and how the takers are destroying the world through knowing nothing about it. This book has many parts of it that make it interesting to read, like the Takers and Leavers, all the different themes, and the discussion Ishmael has on the environment and how humans treat it.

The Unredeemed Captive tells a story of struggles a family went through to stay true to one another. Eunice Williams’ was taken captive and family went through many obstacles to try and get her home. Both Eunice and her family were captured together along with many other town residents in the Deerfield Massacre of 1704. Demos precisely described the Deerfield raid along with the process of traveling to Canada. Throughout the book, Demos also covered some individual captive experiences and events. Demos showed the life of Eunice before her life was changed and how it would be if she was not taken. He stated why the raid was the way it was and showed the success of it.

Imagine being unable to trust anyone even when their best interests is to give a helping hand. In the book a long way gone, Ishmael has went through a lot of trauma because he fought in war at a young age. One of the things that he lost was his trust in people while being in the war. This also made it hard for him to communicate with people, even for people who were trying to help him after being saved after the war. Survival was another thing that Ishmael has struggled with because he wanted to survive the war and stay alive.

This week’s reading focused on prisons. The Society of Captives was written by Gresham M. Sykes in 1958. He conducted a study on a maximum security prison in New Jersey. Chapter 1 focused on the prison and its settings. The author goes into detail about the size of the cells and what the prison actually looks like. He also writes about how the prisoner is no longer seen as man but as a number. My Sunday school teacher visits prisons to teach about the bible. He has commented to me that is exactly how certain correction officers see the prisoners. They are nothing but a number to some individuals. This can lower their self-image (Sykes, 1958).

Ishmael wants American readers to know that war is brutal. Americans tend to romanticize war. They believe war involves people committing great acts of heroism and bravery while fighting to protect the love of their life. Ishmael knows that is not what war is like. There is no romance; and there is no heroism involved in war. It is terrible people doing terrible things. War takes humanity away from people. They turn into animals who just kill and torture people. Everyone else is running away from the war just to have the war catch up to them. Americans do not see the honest truth of war, and Ishmael wanted to change that by telling his story of war.

James A. Honey’s “The World’s Reward” and Maya Angelou “Caged Bird” tell about how freedom is feasible of physical enslavement.

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.

Everyone wants to be in control of their own lives and have a bit of freedom, sadly this doesn’t happen for some. I have chosen to look at films,novels and short stories that are to do with being controlled. This includes the novel ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ written by Melina Marchetta, a short story ‘On the sidewalk bleeding’ by Evan Hunter and the films ‘The Hunger games’ directed by Gary Ross and ‘The boy in the striped pyjamas’ directed by Mark Herman.

John Demos in a sense presents themes that are entirely familiar and conventional. The themes of sin, retribution, and repentance are very prevalent in his writing. The loss of piety, the failure of spiritual nerve, the absolute necessity of reform; and the certainty of God's punishment if reform was not achieved appear throughout his book (Demos). (In this instance, Eunice's failure to return to her native land is putting her at risk in the eyes of God). For approximately 60 years John Williams who had been a captive for almost two years, and is one of the main characters of the story writes different letters, sermons, in an effort to reach the captive daughter. According to John Williams, "God

The idea of captivity is evident in both Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and Fredrick Douglass’ “Learning to Read and Write.” To elaborate, Plato’s text is an allegory, or an extended metaphor, about captives who are inside a cave for a long time “and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and [they] will see, if [they] look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets”

Captivity is a subject that has been discussed thoroughly by many people. Captivity is the main concept touched in Daniel Quinn’s novel, Ishmael, and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Plato makes the compelling argument that people are captives of the world of ignorance. Ishmael complements Plato’s allegory by agreeing that there are two groups of people, that it would be difficult to distinguish the truth, and that people are being deceived.

The captivity narrative genre includes writings by or about people captured by an enemy, usually one who is considered by the hostage to be a foreign and uncivilized heathen, and was especially popular in America and England in the seventeenth through late nineteenth centuries. Documents from the time show that between 1675 and 1763, at least 1,641 New Englanders were held in captivity as hostages, though many believe that the numbers are drastically low because of poor record keeping (Vaughan, 53). Regardless of the exact number of hostages, the fact is that thousands of people were profoundly affected by being held captive by the Indians. Some of those people, including Mary Rowlandson,

The world is being sickened by the needs of man in today's society. People, love to live in luxury without knowing the consequences of their actions. This is because man lives at a pace set by himself, and not one that is naturally set by nature. This is shown excellently in a quote inside of the novel Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The Quote states, “the rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature.” The Earth is experiencing such rapid and disastrous change due to the wants of man. Man demands too much from the earth and not only is this changing the Earth, but it is also depleting many non renewable resources

Daniel Quinn’s novel Ishmael discusses the aspiration the character Ishmael has toward teaching his student known as the narrator to “save the world”. Ishmael teaches the narrator to understand and form ideas, based on examining the question “why are things are the way they are”? Ishmael 's teaching help the narrator and the reader explore culture and ourselves in a new light, helping the narrator and the reader understand the quote stating "It should be noted that what is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself."(255). In order to interpret the quote the narrator and ourselves first had to understand “why things are the way they are”.