In chapter 8, Ishmael uses a metaphor -- the jungle and an animal’s way to live in the jungle. Quinn uses this image as an ideal type of society, and expresses the importance of having limits to process one’s own game and to share the resources by explaining how the jungle is sustained. Quinn highlights that the animals don’t reach beyond what is required to survive: ”The lion defends its kill as its own, but it doesn’t defend the herds as its own” (Quinn 127). However, how human races differ from the wild animal is that we don’t have the custom of saving foods and resources for others so that we come to start destroying the balance of system we live in and threatening the portions of other people’s foods and resources. Moreover, in chapter 9, Quinn provides the reason of human’s customs reminding us the notion of takers and leavers. According to what he constructed in chapters 8 and 9, the main reason of denying others to access to foods and continuing to belong to takers is that [we] “had to be forced to live like the Takers, because the Takers had the one right way” which is forced us to live like everyone in the world to do (Quinn 167).
The novel uses Socratic dialogue to keep asking questions to a pupil and to reach to the point way to miss its importance in our daily life. By using this type of narration, what he achieves is helping readers to re-think about the issue which is very easy to ignore and deny because we are so familiar with. Rather than constructing a new concept, Quinn applies the image of jungle as a metaphor that he helps us to reflect ourselves comparing what we don’t see and have forgotten for longtime.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I really liked Gi Hyun's last point about constructing the reader to rethink an issue. I think the topic of "re-think" has been very relative in this past unit, especially in "The Jungle" and "11th Hour." The connection that links all of these stories together is the way the audience is constructed to re-think what they already know in order to bring about change. In the case of "The Jungle", Upton Sinclair portrays the dangers of the meat packing industry as to change the audience's perception of the industry. By doing so, the audience would then re-think how it is currently run and try to bring about a change that will make it safer. In both "11th Hour" and "Ishmael", the audience is constructed to re-think how humans inhabit the earth. They remind us that, since the dawn of human agricultural era, humans have been learning in a "Trial and Error" fashion which has been destructive to the earth. Both stories lead us to think that if we re-think design or re-think our purpose, then perhaps even just the thought process can bring us closer to revolutionizing our world and reducing our destructive foot print.
ReplyDelete