Ishmael Lesson Plan

Why is the narrator angry when he reads the ad? Why does he decide to respond to the ad?

The novel begins with a curious contradiction on the part of the narrator: he is angry and dismissive of the ad and yet clearly fascinated by it, too. The notion of “saving the world” seems foolish and childish to him. The narrator reveals why he is so upset by the ad: he was once one of those childish fools. When he was a young person in the 1960s and 1970s, he, too, wanted to save the world. He believed the kids of the “children’s revolt” would succeed and make the world a better place. Then one day he realized it would never happen and that the revolt had devolved into a...