Is There a Right Way to Live?

Chapter ten of Ishmael is a very critical point in the book. It starts in a particular way telling about the student's personal life, something he had never talked about before. When the student starts focusing more on his life rather than in Ishmael's lessons, he starts noticing he actually wants to keep learning from him, but when he arrives at his office, Ishmael had been evicted, "Got evicted, I guess. Wasn't paying her rent."(pg. 189). The student's problem began at this point, the only thing he really wanted was to learn where Ishmael was, he looked for him everywhere he could imagine, he even went looking for Rachel Sokolow who had died three months ago and he had no idea. After several tries of finding Ishmael, he decided to investigate himself for any carnivals, zoos, menageries that had been in town in the past weeks, and finally had one carnival in his eyes.

He arrived at the carnival, and went in search of "Gargantua, the world's most famous gorilla"(pg. 194), he was at the far corner in a cage on his own. He didn't say anything, but then they started speaking and Ishmael got a little annoyed, and told him to leave him alone. At night when the student came back again and they continued with the lesson of culture, they started talking that culture was the gathering of people's inventions that have been passed from generation to generation. As the student first told Ishmael about the definition of culture "I'd say it's the sum total of everything that makes people a people."(pg198).

The book states that Leavers have always had culture, they have a very well image of their past, but Takers instead don't have their culture as marked, they just have a past since 1963 according to the book. "…among the Leavers you always have the sense of a people with a past extending back to the dawn of time. Among the Takers you have a sense of people with a past extending back to 1963."(pg. 202). As well, Takers have acknowledged the culture of their ancestors, but they still will not live the way they lived. It also talks about that people actually tried saving what was useful to them, mainly if it had to do with production, "Anything related to production was definitely saved. And that's how things came to be this way."(pg. 203).

They were almost finishing their lesson, but before they had to make one point clear, the Leavers had their own way of living that they had formed since the beginning of humanity and they had tested many times before. Instead, the Takers just wanted to find one set of laws that would lead them to a better and easier way of life. They have their set of laws that will make their life easier, but they haven't tested it and they don't have proof that the set of laws they are using to live by will actually work. I personally think that living by a set of laws is outrageous, but unfortunately most of the people live by them.