AP Worthy?

Before the end of the second chapter of Ishmael, I knew that I had made a poor selection for the blog post project. While other books in my AP English class had challenged me, forcing me to read beyond the literal meaning, I found that Quinn wrote plainly and explicitly. Quinn does not write literature, and Ishmael is by no means AP worthy. One reason for this is that there is extremely limited use of literary devices to enhance the meaning of the novel. Furthermore, the use of the English language in general is very simplistic and boring. I do not recommend this book to anyone looking for a thought provoking or challenging read. In fact, I don’t think I would recommend this book to anyone in high school.

In my opinion, the major themes of Ishmael do not have an emotional or human element. The book lacks an underlying meaning which is personally or emotionally relatable for the reader. As such, I found that reading the book was more of a chore than something that was enjoyable. To save readers the time needed to actually read the book, here is a passage which I felt summarized the overall theme fairly well:

“Mother Culture teaches you that this is as it should be. Except for a few thousand savages scattered here and there, all the peoples of the earth are now enacting this story. This is the story man was born to enact, and to depart from it is to resign from the human race itself, is to venture into oblivion. Your place is here, participating in the story, putting your shoulder to the wheel, and as a reward, being fed. There is no ‘something else.’ To step out of this story is to fall off the edge of the world. There’s no way out of it except through death.” (Quinn 11)

For the sake of sharing my delight, here are some examples of literary devices used in Ishmael. Here is a simile: “Then he sat back with a sigh that rumbled through the glass like a distant volcano.” Quinn also employs personification in his discussion of the western collective unconscious which he calls Mother Culture. I don’t quite understand the reason for using this metaphor other than to make an abstract concept more concrete and detestable. Admittedly, Quinn does use other literary devices occasionally, but they rarely are used to develop a larger meaning. This lack of meaningful literary devices supports the idea that Ishmael is not literature.