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.