2/18/2014
I
told myself I would write my Ishmael blog
post tonight right after finishing the book, since that’s when everything would
be fresh in my mind. However, once I had three pages left, I threw the book
down on the counter and made a very loud groaning noise, similar I’m sure to
the one Quinn describes many times throughout his novel. I didn’t pick up the book to finish it for at
least another half an hour. As you may have guessed, here’s the line that
caused me to refuse reading for another sentence:
“It was the pneumonia that got
him – your friend the ape.”
WHY DID ISHMAEL NEED TO DIE? He
could have just moved on with the circus or gone to live in happy retirement
with Mr. Sokolow. I don’t understand how the death of the big, wise, personified
gorilla added any conclusion or knowledge to the novel. After giving us Takers all the answers to the
problems in our society, why did he have to die?
I literally can’t even write this
right now. I think I’ll go mourn his death.
2/19/2014
We had a guest today from another
class come to our period. At first, I really didn’t care either way that she
was there, however, once we moved into discussion I became grateful for her
presence. My main question after finishing Ishmael
is why he had to die, and how this helped the book come together in the end. I
believe our guest really helped clarify this for me and got the conversation
flowing in our class, which seems to have been a problem throughout the
semester so far. As a class, we came up with two main reasons why Quinn killed
off Ishmael in the end. First of all, he never proposed a real solution as to
what we’re all supposed to do with the information we’ve gained from this
novel. After Ishmael died, he left the Takers to absolutely figure the rest of
the problems and the solutions by themselves. It’s possible that with Ishmael’s
death, the readers are supposed to see that there’s really no solution at all. Second,
when we first start getting to know Ishmael, we learn that he has had four
pupils before, all of who failed to learn completely about his subject of captivity.
As long as Ishmael couldn’t find a pupil who he could transfer all of his
knowledge to, he would be a captive of his own area of expertise. However, once
Ishmael finally finishes teaching the narrator, he dies. It would seem as if
now that Ishmael finished teaching someone, he could die in peace. This shows
how we, as humans and as Takers, will never have our own peace until we
complete our task as well.
After I calmed down from finishing
the novel yesterday, I realized that the death of Ishmael was really the only
conclusion the book could have come to. If he had just left to live with Mr.
Sokolow, he would always be out there, able to answer our questions and give us
the easy way out. He already did enough for us throughout the book by bringing
some wisdom to a thick-headed human.
