Ishmael; chapters one and two

      This book has a very interesting beginning. At first, I read it as a piece of nonfiction because that is all I have been reading recently but then the gorilla came to be and I could not quite fit that into the real world any more. Not to say that there isn't magic and nonsense in the world, because there is, but you would be hard pressed to find it in a book that is trying to get you to believe something, objectively speaking.
      At the very beginning of the book there is a quote that stuck out to me, "Get a job, make some money, work till you're sixty, then move to Florida and die." It is quintessential to our society today and how we view the world, a single path to success. Daniel Quinn, the author of Ishmael, has a narrative that is very spirited and excited about another pathway. The narrator only desires this alternative pathway to "saving the world."
       I really enjoy when Ishmael first explains his story and how he came to be. It is very interesting that the author gets deep inside what he believes an animal may be able to think. Animals, supposedly, have no idea of their individualism especially if they live in a pack like a gorilla. They have a family so they are a family, not necessarily a part of it because without it the individual would not exist. It is a complicated phenomenon to think about because as humans we are extremely individualistic. Ishmael says that he is a "member of a family - of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years."
       Ishmael makes me think of my beginning studies of Anthropology, the evolution of the human and what that means. You can learn a lot about that here at this Human Evolution site.