Ishmael Entry

Ishmael. In some time it will say everything, but for now... It is not only a book made out of paper and ink, but this book, I prefer to say, is made out of wisdom and it is truly astute and perceptive. It is a novel that in its incredible whit, anyone, of any age or state of mind understands it and interprets it in a different way. 

The way I have been capable of understanding is by stopping myself in the reading and asking myself, or better asking the novel to teach me. 

Ishmael in my point of perception is a book reflecting ourselves as humans, as individuals, and as people that interact in society. On the first chapters of the book, (I'm still in an early stage of it) the fact that a gorilla can understand human talk, and after that be able to teach our very own history is fantastic. I think this is because in our modern day civilization we are so into ourselves and only ourselves, not caring about our neighbor, we are self destructing our society from the inside. We are the ones who are going to produce our own finale. So a force, a being that is different from us has to come in contact with this civilization and make us realize we are our very end. We cant comprehend that we are trapped in this civilization, and we can't get out because we just cant find the bars of our cage and we are to lazy to search for, as it says on the book on page 25: "they were unable to find the bars of the cage. If you cant discover what's keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual". Maybe deep inside what Quinn knows and is trying to communicate is that truly our nature is that in order to survive, we have to destroy, and there is nothing we can do about it. "Eat or be eaten". So in his book, he creates a character that seeks pupils (not the other way around) so he can teach the truth about life, in this case what really makes you believe is the gorilla, because in any other way the pupil wouldn't take seriously the concept of "must have an earnest desire to save the world"(pg.4). The question that is posted at the beginning, puts you into  thinking a lot: "With man gone will there be hope for gorilla?"(pg2.62) The way I think abut is that if the humans seize to exist will the other species we have denied to survive, will then survive? Is the only way for the world to be saved is for us to vanish? But then what would be the point of saving it, if we would not be roaming its land... Or: "With gorilla gone will there be a hope for man?" (pg. 263) This is also a very good question. I think about it this way; The only way for humans to keep on existing, is for the other species (not only gorillas) to come to an end? But still, we would die, because without any animals life would be impossible. In conclusion, animals could live without us, but we couldn't without them; so at the end which is the weak species? Which one lacks the true wisdom this novel is teaching us? I hope one day every human can find himself out of the cage, and that way saving the whole Earth: Our only home...