Ishmael Book Report

Ishmael is a book that was written by Daniel Quinn. What led me to read this book was that the storyline of this book seemed more interesting than the other book options. The main story line of this book didn’t have much of an impact on me, but some smaller parts did. When Ishmael, who is the main character, was talking about being in captivity versus when he was in Africa it made me wonder what actual animals feel about living in zoos. This makes me think about when I go to zoos and see animals that are visually distressed. Because of these animals not liking where they live, I believe some should be released back in the wild. The story of this book is quite simple. The narrator sees and ad asking for a student wanting to save the world with him. The narrator goes to the location of the teacher and finds a gorilla named Ishmael who can communicate telepathically. He begins to him his life story of living peacefully in Africa to then moving into captivity from being in a zoo to moving to a carnival. He then proceeds to tell him stories of two different groups that he calls the “Takers” and “Leavers”. The Takers are the group of people looking to develop society and the Leavers are the group who look to live in undeveloped and primitive societies. Over the course of the novel, Ishmael tells his stories to the narrator about these different societies …show more content…
Since the Takers are looking to develop society some of the decisions they have been making aren’t the greatest. Watching the planet the planet’s environment being destroyed and seeing global warming is a huge disappointment to me so that’s why this connected to me. It was also disappointing when Ishmael died in the end of the book. The part of how animals are locked up in captivity only hit me after I finished the book and it made me disappointed at zoos that aren’t treating animals