Adam ate the apple

(Before I get to analyzing Ishamel’s philosophy of life, I would like to point out a few differences in the characters. At the beginning of the novel, Ishamel asked the narrator why he wasn’t astonished by his findings and the narrator responded we has astonished, but knew how to hide in very well. By the end of chapter 10, we see a change. The narrator is more involved and lets his expressions show. We also see a part of Ishmael we didn’t know before. We is very hurt by the girl’s death and shows his proud side when he rejects the help the narrator is trying to give him.)
"The knowledge of who shall live and who shall die” (pg. 160), belongs, or should belong to the gods. I had heard this before I read the book and I am sure all of us had heard the story of Adam eating the apple. There are more than two sides to every story, and “mother culture” has always told this story the same way. Adam ate the apple because we humans aren’t perfect, and we have come to believe it was alright, because we all make mistakes.
Ishmael, on the other hand, tells the story from a different perspective. He sees it differently, maybe because he isn’t a human. For Ishmael, Adam eating the apple was a point in which human beings started to believe they had the same rights as gods. Even though Adam eating the apple is just a myth, a metaphore, it’s explains human behavior.
We believe we have the right to decide everything, after all, “the world was made for man, and man was made to conquer and rule, and under human rule it was meant to become paradise.” (pg.82) We, as a species in general, still think this is how things are meant to be, and this is the reason why we have become so destructive. We have always gone against nature, and nature has always made attempts against human actions. Since nature didn’t let us do what we wanted with her, we had no other choice than to conquer her.
We believe the world was made for us and take what we want and more than what we need. The past generations have discovered we are doing things wrong but “It’s a problem our children will have to solve, or their children. (pg. 80)
Now, we know we aren’t in paradise. Ishmael later states something different than what he had said before-“His conquest (referring to man) turned out to be more destructive than anticipated.” (pg. 82) We could save the world if we started to face problems now and didn’t leave them to future generations, but why would we do that? The world is ours and we aren’t going to stop conquering it. We’ll move to other planets if we have nothing else to conquer. If we end up destroying everything, there will be nothing to worry about. After all, there is a whole galaxy for man to explore, to conquer.