PLOT:
The story begins with a young man coming across a newspaper
ad the read: "Teacher seeks
pupil, must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in
person." Even though the young man,
who is the narrator of the story, initially reacts to the ad with disgust, he
later decides to respond to the ad when he reminisces about his youth during
the 1960’s children’s revolts. When he
arrives to the place of learning, he finds out that his teacher is a gorilla
named Ishmael. Ishmael and the man take
part in a dialogue throughout the entirety of the novel. Ishmael teaches the student a story of how
human beings have become captive prisoners in their own civilization and
culture. This captivity is analogous to
Ishmael’s life that is spent in physical captivity in zoos and circuses.
Ishmael describes
how two cultures have subscribed their entire being to certain ideologies. Ishmael
emphasizes that a culture is defined as a people enacting a story and doing
everything in their power to make the story come true. A
majority of the dialogue concerns the ways of the “takers” and how they came
about and why their way of life is not sustainable. The takers are the majority of the world’s civilization,
which the narrator also happens to be a part of. Takers consider themselves “civilized”. The taker culture originated in the Near East
about 10,000 years ago during the Agricultural Revolution. Takers believe that man has dominion over the
earth and is here to continue to conquer the world. Man should do everything in his power to
assume the responsibilities of the gods. In the takers’ efforts to “bring about
their view of paradise” to the world, man spoils and destroys the world because
he is flawed.
The alternative
to the “taker” culture is that of the “leavers”. Ishmael doesn’t discuss the story of the
leavers to the extent that he talks about the takers. The leavers are the people of all other
cultures that are thought of by mainstream society as primitive peoples. Ishmael named a few specific leaver cultures,
and they happened to all be small indigenous cultures throughout the
world. The leavers acknowledge that
their purpose on this planet is no more important than that of all other biota. They believe that they have no dominion over
earth and no reason to believe that they should take on the role of the gods.
Ishmael believes
that man has reached the pinnacle of evolution because the takers do not
acknowledge the fact that they actually belong to the world rather than having
unlimited control of the earth. Takers
believe that that they are superior to all other species. Man is at a standstill because he is stubborn
and doesn’t allow for true growth. But
if man were to live in a manner in which he succumbed to the hands of the gods,
man would be exposed to the conditions under which evolution occurs. Ishmael states , “…man became man by living
in the hands of the gods.…by living the way the bushmen of Africa live; by
living the way the Krenakarore of Brazil live...Not the way the Chicagoans
live, not the way Londoners live….For
three million years, man belonged to the world and because he belonged to the
world, he grew and developed and became brighter and more dexterous until one day,
he was so bright and so dexterous that we had to call him Homo sapiens sapiens-- which means he was us."
The book ends when
Ishmael’s pupil goes to the circus to save him, but upon his arrival, he found
out that Ishmael had died. The last
conversation between Ishmael and his pupil concerned the importance of
educating people about the stories of the takers and the leavers. Ishmael gives his student this responsibility. The man remembers when Ishmael said, "Teach
a hundred what I've taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a
hundred."
CENTRAL THEMES:
Daniel Quinn
chose to use the biblical story of Genesis as an analogy to represent the
historical phenomenon of manifest destiny throughout the world. The story of Genesis is used metaphorically
to represent the relationship between the takers (represented by Cain) and the
leavers (represented by Abel). Ishmael
states,
“The story of Genesis must
be undone. First, Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you're to
survive. The Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world -
not because they're humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of
the world that there is more than one right way to live. And then, of course,
you must spit out the fruit of the forbidden tree. You must absolutely and
forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on
this planet."
The story of manifest
destiny continues to occur 10,000 years later.
To this day, takers continue to pillage the land that belonged to the
leavers for thousands of years. In doing
this, the takers pillage the leavers’ cultures all in the name of spreading
their religion and putting the land under cultivation for food, water, and
precious minerals. The world now only
utilizes five out of the several thousand crops for our main food sources. Consequently, the agricultural peoples have
decided what organisms to displace and destroy.
Water and minerals have also been displaced and destroyed all in the
name of frivolous abundance. In essence,
the takers’ revolution was a revolution against the leavers’ story.
In spite of all
the presumed control takers have over the earth, Ishmael teaches his student
that there are immutable laws that cannot be broken. Unlike tax laws and the commandment, “thou
shalt not kill”, which can be easily broken or changed by a vote, immutable
laws are natural ecology determined by the physics of the universe and can’t be
broken. A culture that doesn’t follow
these laws will not survive in the long term.
It is clear that the takers consider themselves to be exempt by these
laws. This lifestyle has continued and
has been adopted by a majority of the world’s population. Even though this lifestyle has occurred for a
relatively short period of time in comparison to the millions of years of human
existence, our world is now experiencing
intensified environmental crises more and more often as our lifestyles
contradict the immutable laws of the universe.
Ishmael states,
"There's nothing fundamentally wrong with
people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they
will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them
at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world.
Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as
the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe
to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably,
their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.”
FAVORITE QUOTES:
Human Passivity Regarding Environmental Issues:
“What have people been told that keeps them from getting excited, that
keeps them relatively calm when they view catastrophic damage they’re
inflicting on this planet? …. They’ve been told an explaining story. They’ve been given an explanation of how things came to be this way, and this
stills their alarm. This explanation
covers everything, including the deterioation of the ozone layer, the pollution
of the oceans, the destruction of the rain forests, and even human extinction –
and it satisfies them. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it pacifies them.”
Reparation to the Environment: “The
problem is that man’s conquest of the world has itself devastated the
world. And in spite of all the mastery
we’ve attained, we don’t have enough mastery to stop devastating the world – or to repair the devastation we’ve
already wrought.”
The Taker Paradox: “…famine
soon becomes a routine condition of life in many parts of the Taker Thunderbolt
– and the Takers have to pedal even harder and more efficiently than
before. But oddly enough, the harder and
more efficiently the pedal, the worse conditions become…”
Putting time into context and ironically placing
the blame on human nature: “Man lived harmlessly on this
planet for some three million years, but the Takers have brought the whole
thing to the point of collapse in only five hundred generations. And their explanation for this is what?...Not
that you Takers may be doing something wrong but rather that there is something
fundamentally wrong with human nature itself.”
At war with the earth: “We’re not
destroying the world because we’re clumsy.
We’re destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and
deliberate way, at war with it.”
Simply put: “…If you start taking more for yourself, then
there’s got to be less for someone else for something
else.”
Different types of agriculturalists: “…there are semi-agriculturalists who grow
a little and gather a lot. And then
there are near-agriculturalists who grow a lot and gather a little.
Need of Inspiration: “They need more than a vision of doom.
They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires
them…Stopping pollution is not inspiring.
Sorting your trash is not inspiring.
Cutting down on flourocarbons is not inspiring. But thinking of
ourselves in a new way, thinking of the world in a new way…”
Prison: “…it should be noted that what is crucial to your survival as a race is not
the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the
destruction of the prison itself.”
No comments:
Post a Comment