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1-Page Summary of Ishmael

Overview

The narrator finds an ad in the newspaper that reads: “Teacher seeks pupil. Must have a desire to save the world.” The narrator goes to see the teacher and begins his adventures with Ishmael.

At first, the narrator is angry because he thinks that helping Ishmael will be like saving the world. He was a part of the counterculture movement in his youth and found it to be useless. Nevertheless, he responds to Ishmael’s ad for help and finds that the gorilla can communicate telepathically with him. They learn about each other’s pasts – in which Ishmael was stolen from his mother at birth and put into captivity, then rescued by a Holocaust survivor who taught him how to speak English. Impressed by this story, the narrator decides to keep working with Ishmael throughout the book.

The narrator and Ishmael then begin their dialogue about the topic of captivity. The narrator claims that he has spent his whole life in a form of captivity, and now they are going to discuss what it means for humanity as well.

Ishmael learned how to communicate with people in zoos and aquariums, so he’s able to think like a human. The narrator has similar feelings of being trapped, but can’t express them well. Before they start their discussion, Ishmael defines some terms:

“Takers” are the people who developed agriculture in the Neolithic Revolution. They’re also known as “civilized” because they’ve evolved from a simpler time when men were hunters and gatherers to more civilized times, such as now. The rest of humanity is called “leavers,” or uncivilized people. A story is an interrelation between gods, man, and earth that can be enacted by humans through their daily lives in order to make it true. A culture is a group of people enacting stories together (41).

Ishmael and his pupil discuss the differences between the Taker and Leaver stories. They point out that Takers believe they are at the top of evolution, which has led to catastrophic results for humans. The story that drives this belief is passed down through society by Mother Culture, who reinforces it in every aspect of life for Takers. Takers blame their problems on gods or something else external to themselves, but Ishmael believes that people only have themselves to blame because they’re enacting a destructive story against nature.

The narrator and Ishmael also establish some rules that have allowed the world to survive for so long. One of those rules is that there is limited competition amongst all species. Only humans have taken exception to this rule, which suggests that any species can protect itself but cannot wipe out another species or food chain.

The author then explores the Genesis origin stories of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel. He claims that the story was created by Leavers to explain why Takers started acting as if they owned the world. The story is about a man who ate from the Tree of Knowledge and gained knowledge about who should live or die even though he didn’t gain any such information (160). What this represents is that it’s not actually a fall for mankind but rather a belief held by those in power at that time – which were Leavers – that they had control over nature on par with or superior to gods.

Ishmael then explains how the ancient Semitic herders, who originated the tale of Cain and Abel, used that story to symbolize the way that agricultural civilizations were destroying hunter-gatherer societies. The Takers thought they had divine knowledge about who should live or die.

The narrator is distracted from his work by a visitor and has to put off visiting Ishmael. When he returns, he finds that Ishmael has been removed. After some investigation, the narrator finds out that Ishmael had passed away. However, after some time passes, the narrator visits him at a carnival where he works as part of an exhibit about whales.