Ishmael and Teaching

After reading The Jungle, it was very obvious that Ishmael does not show as many tragic moments. The novel targets the whole people in the earth, rather than individual characters. When the novel first shows the main character, he/she seems to be tired of the way the world is, and is even seems tired of his own life. When he is first shown, he is exasperated by an ad he sees. ”Must have an earnest desire to save the world” (Quinn 4). Once he sees that the teacher is a gorilla, he starts to ask multiple questions, such as why and how. He ends up starting to find answers by visiting the teacher’s office in regular basis, and doing homework, which eventually changes his behavior. The novel, in a way, takes away the main character’s desire and happiness to pursue the truth. He realizes new things from the teacher he never expected before.

As the lesson of Ishmael proceeds, the newly gained thoughts and conclusions made seemed to make us feel sadness by itself. The results of the conversation between the two give us our inability to save the earth that readers might feel emptiness, catharsis in a way. The novel shows the readers that the issue is even if we know the reason of problem and the way to solve it, it is a huge area to fix. Readers are guided to undo the mistake we made, and to come back to the time when the takers first appeared.