The End of Ishmael

As I began reading these chapters I thought there was no way that the story could be wrapped up efficiently in such a short amount of writing. However, I discovered that I was wrong and I was pleasantly surprised.

At the beginning of chapter 10 the narrator ends up with many distractions in his life that prevent him from visiting Ishmael. In a way I think that Quinn is trying to show how many things can get in the way of humans trying to find a way to "fix" our situation without being fully devoted to the search. If the narrator really wanted to he could have gone and seen Ishmael many times and instead he put it off to do something else that was "more important" at the time.

Once the narrator finally finds Ishmael at the carnival, Ishmael doesn't want to leave and the narrator wants to find out the rest of the story. So, in order to complete the learning the narrator visits Ishmael when there are no people around. They end up talking about the Leavers' story of how they came to be. Eventually, the narrator comes to the conclusion that the Leavers are "those who live in the hands of the gods" and that they "belong to the world", while the Takers think that "the world belongs to man" and that's how it should be. This is why they are constantly trying to change the Leavers into Takers like themselves.

One of my favorite things from these chapters is when the narrator finally comes to the idea that if humans take on the Takers way of living than eventually the world will come to disaster, but if we take on the Leavers way of living "then creation will go on forever". To me this seems to be the point of the whole book. It is the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. The idea that Daniel Quinn is trying to get all of the readers to see and understand. I think that the way that he builds up the story to this point is really effective because the reader is waiting for him to tell us how we can fix things, how can we make a change in our world and he puts this information in so effortlessly that it seems to work very well.

At the end of the book, before Ishmael dies, he tells the narrator that the next step is to tell other people the story, teaching them the lessons that he learned from Ishmael. He says that this is the only way to "save the world". He suggests that the narrator teach a hundred people and then they, in turn, will teach a hundred more. Ishmael points out that with the technology in the world today that this isn't a hard feat to accomplish. He says that we can't just try to go back in time to the way things used to be, we can't just abandon our lives (like the Hohokam), but we have to invent a new way to live.

Ishmael Chapter 9

I have to say that this was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting chapter so far. It really makes me think about things that have never even crossed my mind before.

The beginning of the chapter Ishmael makes a drastic change. He is no longer on the other side of the glass, now when they meet he is near the narrator. At first this startles the narrator, but I think that he gets used to it after a short while. I wonder why he picked this exact day to 'uncage' himself. Maybe he felt that the narrator was ready to be challenged with the ideas that they have been speaking about. Ishmael shows the narrator his timeline for the takers and leavers.

He goes on to tell the story of how the Takers began by demolishing everything in their paths, including the Leavers. He says that the story of Cain and Abel from the Bible isn't really supposed to be a story teaching morals and showing people what not to do. Instead, he says that it is the story told by the Leavers about how the Takers took over the land.

Abel represents the Leavers and Cain represents the Takers. Cain began killing Abel and watering his fields with Leaver blood. They started out with a small amount of land and after a short period of time, at least speaking evolutionary, they had spread throughout most of the land.

To me this was a very interesting idea. I had never thought about this story this way. I grew up in church and I had heard the story so many times I could probably recite it in my sleep. Now that I have seen it this way I see the connection to the history of man. I understand the narrator's confusion at first and his reaction to Ishmael telling him the story because I too reacted the same way.

Ishmael Chapters 5-8

Going back to reading Ishmael, after taking a break for Thoreau, makes me enjoy Quinn's writing style even more. It is drastically different than Thoreau's. These chapters are mostly about Ishmael showing the narrator that he really does know more about the 'story' that he realizes or is willing to admit. 

He begins by asking the narrator why there are things wrong with the world. The narrator's answer is that humans are bound to screw things up because they don't know how to live the right way. Then they go on discussing how to find the law that humans think doesn't apply to them, as it applies to all other creatures, and why they believe that. Ishmael makes a good point when he asks about why humans don't have a law that states how we ought to live. He questions why we go to prophets for answers instead of figuring out the law on our own. 

Ishmael goes on to compare would-be aeronauts learning how to fly to the way humans figure out laws and how they work. There is a lot of trial and error until we finally find something that works. The first aeronauts had to figure out how to overcome the law of aerodynamics and the law of gravity in order to fly instead of fall. They didn't necessarily know that was what they were doing but eventually they figured it out. The narrator says the same goes for humans. We don't know what law we are trying to overcome, just that if we do it we will have succeeded.

After a while of Ishmael trying to get the narrator to figure things out on his own, he seems to get frustrated that there is no progress. So, he sends the narrator home and tells him to figure out the laws on his own before he can come back. It takes the narrator a while to get an idea about what the laws are, but when he thinks that he has it he meets with Ishmael again. 

One of the main laws that they talk about is about agriculture. The way farmers kill off any animal, insect or plant that gets in the way of producing 'our food' is a large problem. It will eventually lead to disaster. Once we kill off all of our competition (and eventually, their food) our population will expand in a huge amount. Eventually there will not be enough food to support the population and there will be nothing left to kill off. What do we do then?

We are already experiencing this problem on an extremely small scale. We try to grow food to feed the starving people around the world and ship it to them or help them grow it where they live. However, if this continues and the population keeps growing, one day there will be no where else to grow and harvest food and there will be so many more starving people than there are today. We need to find a way to fix this problem before it escalates out of proportion.

Walden Excerpts Part 2

After some of the things that we talked about Thoreau during our last class I have noticed more and more how he has two drastically different writing styles. One is very methodical and science-based. I can tell that he is a very educated person and that he wants to share what he sees with the reader. For example during The Pond in Winter Thoreau shares the different temperature readings that he has recorded from the ponds in the neighboring areas and tells how that effects the rate of ice melt. However, Thoreau also has a very poetic side to his writing. One of my favorite examples of this is from The Ponds:

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows."

~Thoreau, Walden

Thoreau compares the landscape of the lake and its surroundings to human characteristics which I find very interesting. It seems almost as if he is trying to make nature seem more like a person and less like a thing. I decided to look for artists who try to show the link between humanity and nature and came across Kate Macdowell who has a very interesting take on this. Some of her creations are interesting while others just look creepy.

Overall I really enjoyed reading Walden and I learned more about who Thoreau was and what motivated his writing by reading these excerpts. I think that next time I read his works I will be better equipped to hear his message as well as understand the reading and enjoy it.

Walden Excerpts Part 1

At first I wasn't sure that I would enjoy these excerpts from Walden, but after I finished reading I realized that I actually enjoyed it. I liked the way that Thoreau writes. He spends a lot of time in his writing describing the things that he observed. He tries to engage all of the readers senses when he writes so that they are able to see the big picture. He does a great job in Sounds with describing the nature around him, what he can hear and see. 

Map of Walden Pond

I also enjoyed reading Thoreau's portrayal of the other people in the village. He makes it sound as if the only things that they care about are gossip and the news. The way he talks about the villagers makes the reader think he enjoys going to town almost as a sport, to watch and listen to the gossiping townspeople. He says that the "vitals of the village" are the places where most of the gossiping takes place. I also found it interesting the way he talks about the newspaper. He makes a good point about how people only want to hear about things in the news once and then it gets boring because it is old news, especially if it is news from another country.

 "Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations." This is one of the lines from The Village that really caught my attention. When many people think of Thoreau they think about the man who spent years living alone in nature, just observing his surroundings. Even if this is not extremely accurate, I feel that people can learn from Thoreau from this quote because we can't learn how to find ourselves until we become truly lost in nature.

One of the things that I found while researching Walden is the Walden Woods Project which is trying to keep Thoreau's legacy alive by preserving the land, literature and legacy.

Ishmael Chapters 3 & 4

After finishing chapters 3 and 4 I found it very interesting that the narrator took so long to understand what Ishmael was getting at about the myths. It seemed to me that any time Ishmael asked him a question he kind of brushed it off saying that he didn't understand and then had Ishmael answer the question for him. I found this really interesting especially because in the beginning the narrator talks about how for a long time he looked for a teacher and now that he has one, he isn't participating the way I thought he would be. If he was so desperate for a teacher, why does he now act as if he doesn't care about what Ishmael is trying to show him.

This makes me think of what the room in the
office building looks like from Ishmael's perspective

After the narrator relates his story of how things came to be and Ishmael tries to tell him that it is a myth he gets extremely frustrated with him. So to prove his point Ishmael tells him the story about jellyfish. I found this entertaining because many people today think the same way that the narrator does. We believe that the world is here for man and that man is here to take charge of it. However, many times we don't bother to look past what we see as the "end" of the story. We don't think 'what comes next?' Like when Ishmael asks the narrator to imagine a world without man and he describes it as this awful place where the jungle has taken over.

In our world today many people see the world as something that we are in charge of. We control the plants and the animals, we control who is allowed to live where, we even (in some ways) control who can eat what. Humans see the Earth as ours and "take charge" over it, although it may not be in ways that are beneficial. Sometimes when you have complete control over something it loses its value. For example if you borrow something from someone you tend to take better care of it than if it were your own. I feel that humans do the same thing with the world. We see it as ours to do what we please and if we don't stop soon and do something else one day there will be greater consequences.

Eaarth Chapter 4

As I finished Eaarth I realized that McKibben really wrapped this up neatly. During this last chapter he seems to bring up some ideas to get us started looking for ways to slow down our impact on climate change. The three things that he talks the most about are agriculture, alternate energy sources and the impact of the internet.

One of the things that McKibben said that really stuck out to me was:

"I'm not arguing for local food because it tastes better, or because it's better for you. (It does, and it is. There's really not much debate.) I'm arguing that we have no choice - that the new Eaarth has much less margin than the planet we grew up on, and hence we're going to need to take advantage of opportunities we've passed by before. In a world more prone to drought and flood, we need the resilience that comes with three dozen different crops in one field, not a vast ocean of corn or soybeans." (pg.179)

The farmer's market in Otsego

Local food is a very important thing. McKibben makes a good point when he talks about local food (and food grown in variety, not just one type of crop grown in a field going on for miles) being heartier and more resilient. The more important local food becomes the larger farmer's markets will become and the more they will be used.

In my town we have a small farmer's market, but it is only open once a week through the summer and fall. However, the town just down the road has a slightly larger one that is open a couple times a week and has an indoor option in case of bad weather.

"Taking advantage of opportunities we've passed by before," means that we need to start relying more on locally grown food. This means that there needs to be more food grown locally. We need to start doing things like planting town gardens that are there to benefit everyone in the surrounding areas. Another thing that could be done is people planting their own gardens in their yards and supplying their own produce.

After completing Eaarth I really enjoyed it. I think that McKibben does a really good job of getting all of the important information across in a way that catches everyone's attention. He presents the information in a way that no matter who reads it there will be something in there to catch their attention. There is no way that anyone can read it and not see that climate change is affecting everyone. They can't say "Oh, climate change is only affecting people in Australia or Africa," because they can clearly see that climate change is a global problem.

Ishmael Chapters 1 & 2

I have never read Ishmael before and so I wasn't really sure what to expect. I was a little confused at first because the 'narrator' of the story doesn't really give us any background. However, I believe that the was this story is written it works in his favor because it keeps the reader interested. After the narrator paints a picture of what he thinks the teacher from the advertisement would look like I was very surprised to learn that the teacher is a gorilla.

The way that Ishmael tells his story to the narrator without much emotion, it seems like he is just presenting the facts and leaving the emotions up to the listener, in this case the narrator and in turn the reader.  Then he asks the narrator to tell his story, which at first seems to stump the narrator because he feels as though he doesn't know where to start.

When Ishmael brings up the topic of captivity that seems to catch the attention of the narrator which I find interesting because I thought that since he knew how intelligent Ishmael was that he should have thought that Ishmael knew about these types of things especially since he lived in captivity for so many years of his life. I also found it interesting that Ishmael compares captivity to the way we live in the world. He compares it to how we may want to do something to change the world, but nobody knows how or where or when it could happen.

When Ishmael asks the narrator what our story of how things came to be is I tried to think about it the same way that the narrator does until I realized that there were many stories that not everyone agrees with. Then, like the narrator, I was confused until Ishmael says that we are supposed to be looking for our culture's creation myth. That made me think about all of the different ideas people have about how things came to be. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this book and I think it will be an interesting read and hopefully give me some more things to think about.