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Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
Q&A
Why do you think Ishmael doesn’t just simply lecture and tell his “student” all of his ideas up front? I believe Ishmael doesn’t just simply lecture and “student” all of his ideas up front because he would want to break down his ideas to them and make them realize what is going on in the world.
2. Who are The Takers? The takers are the ones who believes that the world belongs to man. The takers take what they have and destroy’s the world by multiplying population. They also, believe that they are the ruler and animal and man cannot be compared.
3. what is mother culture
I believe mother culture is the way us people live upon the earth. She is the one who is telling us that everything
Throughout the book the audience has seen Ishmael go through adventure and sorrow. In the novel Ishmael is forced to go to war at age thirteen, but what keeps him going were his grandmother's wise words. His grandmother was the one who told him powerful lessons that he could use in real life. These lesson that Ishmael is keeping him grounded is not only from his grandmother but also from his friends. Lessons that were seen by the readers are “wild pigs”, “Bra Spider”, and the story about the moon.
...ircumstances as he did, believe that revenge is not good and it keeps on going if no one stops the process. Overall, Ishmael eventually learned that revenge does not solve anything and seeking revenge just results in a longer war sustained by the counterproductive concept of vengeance. Additionally, Ishmael learned that by constantly thinking about his culpability, he was just bringing more harm to himself and in the process was unable to create any progress in his own life. Ishmael eventually realized that merely reflecting on his actions did not do anything and to fix and prevent the problems he faced, he would have to take initiative to reach out to the people who could help. By utilizing the idea of forgiveness, Ishmael learned that he could let go of the huge mountain of stress that was bringing him down and prevented him from overcoming the effects of the war.
It is hard to remain innocent during a time of war. Ishmael was an innocent 12 year old boy when the war broke out and the RUF took over his village. He was chased and shot at by the RUF. As a young boy he had to endure seeing people gunned down in front of him and murdered in the most gruesome ways as illustrated by the author when he said, “I had seen heads cut off by machetes, smashed by cement bricks, and rivers filled with so much blood that the water ceased flowing.”
Ishmael was taken from the wild and held captive in a zoo, a circus, and a gazebo. During his time in various types of captivity, Ishmael was able to develop a sense of self and a better understanding of the world around him. Ishmael states that the narrator and those who share the same culture are “captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order live” (Quinn, 15). He goes to explain that releasing humanity from captivity is crucial for survival, but humans are unable to see the bars of the cage. Using the cage as a metaphor, Quinn is referring to human culture and how they do not see the harm it’s causing. As the novel progresses, it elaborates on how culture came about and why certain people inherit certain cultures. Ishmael refers to a story as the explanation of the relationship between humans, the world and the gods. He defines to enact is to live as if the story is a reality. Ishmael suggest that humans are captives of story, comparing them to the people of Nazi Germany who were held captive by Hitler’s
In the novel, “Ishmael,” Daniel Quinn introduces two groups of people with an apparent connection with Mother Culture; the Takers and Leavers of the world. Quinn’s intended purpose of introducing these two very distinct groups of people in “Ishmael” is to show an outsider’s perspective on the world’s captivity, the creation myth, and the fate of the world- all of which are often given by Mother Culture. The Takers and Leavers appear to have very different belief systems and methods. The Takers, for example, have their organized religion to tell their stories, while Leavers have their spirituality to tell their stories.
Ishmael kills people without it being a big problem or deal. He was forced and threatened. If not then he would be killed. First, he was terrified to see people being killed. In the book, Ishmael quotes “My hand began trembling uncontrollably…” This shows that Ishmael is being aware of his surroundings and of himself. This is important because it shows how Ishmael feels before he and his
Ishmael starts his journey with a will to escape and survive the civil war of Sierra Leone in order to reunite with his mom, dad, and younger siblings, who fled their home when his village was attacked by rebels. Having only his older brother, who he escaped with, and a few friends by his side Ishmael is scared, but hopeful. When the brothers are captured by rebels, Ishmael’s belief in survival is small, as indicated by his fallible survival tactics when he “could hear the gunshots coming closer…[and] began to crawl farther into the bushes” (Beah 35). Ishmael wants to survive, but has little faith that he can. He is attempting to survive by hiding wherever he can- even where the rebels can easily find him. After escaping, Ishmael runs into a villager from his home tells him news on the whereabouts of his family. His optimism is high when the villager, Gasemu, tells Ishmael, “Your parents and brothers wil...
In the quote above, Ishmael is saying that the culture of the Takers is not so much lazy in its execution of civilization, but it is actually at war with the world. I agree with this statement because in the human culture, everything becomes competition to the point where extermination is the solution. Quinn writes, “Diversity is exactly what’s under attack here. Everyday dozens of species disappear as a direct result of the way the Takers compete outside the law” (Quinn 130). Due to mankind’s lust for competition, takers have abused the peacekeeping law which has inevitably decreased the amount of diversity among the community of life. This then causes a world where everyone is for themselves which then leads to an economically fragile society. Moreover, the author uses a
The first story Ishmael tells is that of the takers. Every story is based on a premise. The taker premise is that the world was made for man. If the world is made for man, then it belongs to him, and man can do what ever he pleases with it. It's our environment, our seas, our solar system, etc. The world is a support system for man. It is only a machine designed to produce and sustain human life.
Most people who Ishmael came in contact with and himself, had a conflict between trust and survival. This conflict became an effect of the war in which many people suffered because they chose to live over a possible death. Beah retells his traumatic experience that gives countless situations where survival is picked over trust. In a world without war trust and survival can be
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is a memoir of a young, emotionally distraught child soldier who takes his audience through his mental and physical journey to his eventual escape of the Civil War in Sierra Leone. For the past few days, our World Literature class have been trying to figure out/argue what category A Long Way Gone falls under. In Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried, he distinguishes between two types of stories: (1) stories that need to be real and (2) stories that rely on the emotional truth. To me, A Long Way Gone is a novel that relies on the emotional truth and should be read as such; it relies on the emotions of human beings for the story to be understood as it was written by a boy like one of us. Initially I was not sure what the emotional truth was, so I googled the definition and got that, “an emotional truth is writing in such a way that readers not only learn the facts of an event, but can feel the joy, sorrow, anger, envy, love, hate, poignancy that the participant feels.” And I believe that a story that relies on the emotional truth is not any less significant than stories that strictly state the truth. A story told using emotional truth/validity is a story that, in my opinion, offers more of the real picture than that of a story that doesn’t tug on the emotions of a reader and just blatantly state the true happenings of an event.
Ishmael’s search for revenge ended when he was taken out of the front lines of the war by
I constructed this brochure as one of my analytical pieces, to connect Ishmael’s success through rehabilitation, to the facts about the centers themselves. Esther gave this brochure to Ishmael when he had first started the program after his time as a child soldier. The brochure illuminates the hardships that the children face during war, after war, and the reason that rehabilitation is needed. It also gives the names of different programs and centers where these kids can go to seek help, both mentally and physically. After the war, Ishmael had a withdrawal from the many drugs he had to take, and also the huge toll that they took on his emotions and mental health. The center he attended helped him to progress through this stage, so that he
When one is sitting in a university lecture classroom trying to absorb the vast array of knowledge disseminating out of the PA system, there is a certain ambience that parallels a movie theater. The architecture of the classroom is designed to symbolize the lecturer as the “subject” and the students as the “objects”; meaning, the professor narrates through story-telling and the students passively sit in their seats with open minds readied to be entertained and filled with deposits of wisdom. After the monotony of one lecture following another, students delve into to their stacks of knowledge so that they can memorize, repeat and regurgitate all of the information that they now possess. This type of teacher-to-student dynamic has been intrinsic
She entered the class late and its been very hard for her to catch up but, she isn’t giving up on trying. She will never do something just to do it, her best efforts are put into everything she does. Quality over quantity is an important rule. To Caitlin, quality is perfect meaning, she will not give out multiple things if the quality isn’t right. She would rather spend more time on one thing to make it perfect than spending less time on, not so perfect content. When asked, Caitlin told me that should would rather explain a complex idea simply. Why? If can explain a complex idea in simple word, it means that you’ve mastered it. She believes that being able to teach someone knowledge you have means that you have fully stored and processed it. Caitlin, being from the new generation, reads social media. Snapchat and Instagram are her main sources of information. That doesn’t mean she never reads anything else. She will read a book if it interests her enough. Her favorite book is by her favorite author, The Twilight series by Stephenie Myers. Caitlin doesn’t spend her free time reading though, she would rather spend time with her friends or playing