The Last Task

Chapter 13 is a very short chapter which really doesn’t explain much. It is just a conclusion from which you can deduce all of the teachings Ishmael passed on to the pupil. In a way you are the pupil of the narrator trying to pass on his knowledge. The narrator comes up with a very bad plan to rescue Ishmael from the carnival in which he withdraws all of his savings and rents a van. He is trying to return something to Ishmael for all of his teaching he has given him. He arrives at the carnival and goes to where Ishmael was kept. Here he can only find his belongings and receives very bad news. On page 260 they tell him “It was the pneumonia that got him – your friend the ape.” At this point I realized that the book was in a way trying to give out its last teaching which was for the pupil to pass on the knowledge he had received. The narrator takes most of Ishmaels belongings except the blankets and drives back home. When he is framing Ishmael’s poster he realizes that it has a message on the back “With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla? With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man? (pg. 263) These are the last word that appear in the book and with them comes the last task, for the narrator to pass on his knowledge. He has the task to save humanity, to inform it of the path it is taking and of where it is going.