Thursday, April 7, 2016

Overall reaction to the book

            I think that my opinion about Ishmael has been communicated in my other blog posts, however, for the sake of completing the blog assignment, here are my thoughts about the book as a whole. For one, I thought that many of Quinn’s ideas were sound, particularly those dealing with resource depletion and animal ethics. However, the solutions presented were very farfetched and idealistic. Furthermore, the book was not nearly as challenging as it should have been for an AP English project.
            Like Quinn, I believe that there are problems which need to be addressed in the future. Without fixing these problems there will inevitably be a shortage of natural resources. However, I tend to be an optimist in that I believe humanity will be able to deal with these problems simply because we must. I think that the intent in writing Ishmael was to catalyze some sort of change in the behavior of the younger generation. However, it felt like propaganda because it provided its arguments without offering facts as support. The entire book I was unable to trust that darn gorilla because he so rarely gave supporting evidence. I sincerely wish I had not chosen to read this book especially because I have to write five blog posts which are really just me complaining.

            Quinn’s ideas about animal sentience and the value of life may be ahead of his time and I commend him for that. I also agree with his views about human-centrism and its potential to distort truth. I guess my main issue with Quinn right now is that I didn’t like his writing style. I really don’t have much more to say about this book.

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