View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why is Ishmael reticent about telling the narrator what he wants to know in Chapter 11?

2. In Chapter 7, what law does Ishmael say he is looking for?

3. What does the narrator say is new about Ishmael’s expression at the beginning of Chapter 7?

4. What new name for the Takers do Ishmael and the narrator arrive at in their discussion in Chapter 12?

5. When does Ishmael say the Take population will contract?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Ishmael say the Takers are fulfilling the story in which creation came to an end with them?

2. What surprising behavior does Ishmael describe for the narrator in an imaginary hospitable city?

3. What keeps the narrator from returning to the office building for a few days?

4. How does Ishmael characterize the experiment that is modern civilization?

5. What does the narrator say he would do to figure out the fundamental law of the community Ishmael describes?

6. Where has Ishmael gone when the narrator shows up again at the office building, and how does the narrator reconnect with him?

7. What argument does the narrator offer for why the Takers’ culture is superior to the Leavers’?

8. What are the three things that Takers do that nothing else in nature does?

9. How does Ishmael characterize the debate among the gods about an equitable way to take care of the animals?

10. What does the narrator say is the consequence of the Takers’ culture?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the outcome of the dialogue between Ishmael and the narrator? What influence has the book had on American or western culture? What influence does it have in your reading? How might this book change the story you are enacting?

Essay Topic 2

When is Ishmael most itself? What is its characteristic passage, or moment? What makes that moment or passage the most representative of the book as a whole? Are there any places where the book seems to depart from its typical self, as if to become a different book?

Essay Topic 3

How do you think times have changed since Daniel Quinn published Ishmael in 1992? Is Ishmael’s story still applicable? Have Ishmael’s teachings been learned anywhere? Where are people advocating Ishmael’s views, and what influence are they having?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 992 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample