How I Can Relate My Life to a Book.

I was brought to this country not by choice, but because I was forced to. I was

only twelve years old when my parents decided that the best thing to do was to move out

of Venezuela, my country, and come to the United States of America. Since I was so

young it did not matter what I wanted or what I thought, but what my parents wanted and

thought it was the right thing for me. In a way or another I was captive, not necessarily in

a bad way, but I was not free to do what I wanted. I can certianly understand why things

happened that way because I’m much older now, but when I was only twelve years old

there was nothing in this world that would justify why I had to leave my family, my

friends, my house, and everything I had to come to a country where we had NOTHING.

My sister was only ten, so it was hard on her as well. The more my parents tried to make

us understand, the angrier we got.

Ishmael, a book by Daniel Quinn, dealt with the topics freedom and captivity. For

me freedom before coming to this country had something to do with politics and the

government, but now that I grew up more and understand some things better, freedom for

me is what you make it. Captivity, on the other hand, I think is different to everybody just

like captivity. I was being captive by my parents because they brought me here without

me wanting it. I had to do what they said and nothing else. There was no choice! That

was my way of percieving captivity when I was twelve years old. This book starts on a

way that makes you want to read what happened to this guy that got him so mad. That is

when you find out that he had read an ad that said: “TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have

an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.” he could not get the ad out of his

head. He had to go and prove himself that this teacher was just another scam. He thought

that thirty seconds, a look, and ten words out of his mind would do it. After that he could

just go home and forget about it.

Once he got to room 105 he looked from side to side, from end to end, when he

saw something or someone he would have NEVER expected to see there or anywhere, in

fact. He saw a Gorilla, a full-grown Gorilla like he said. He did not know what to say or

do. Still looking side to side he saw that there was a sign behind the gorilla that said:

WITH MAN GONE, WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR GORILLA? This sign really caught

his attention and he was now thinking about sitting down and be still. And he did.

Something made him look up at the eyes of the gorilla who told him something with a

simple look and he understood. With just a look back, he asked the gorilla how can that

be happening, and with the same look the gorilla answered “What does it matter?”. The

gorilla asked him out loud if it would help if he listens to his story? And he said that

indeed it will. And that is where the gorilla starts his story…

He was born somewhere in the forest of equatorial West Africa, he does not know

where exactly and was never interested in finding out. At one time, during the thirties,

that method that was commonly used to catch the gorillas was that the would kill the

mother and pick up all the infants in sight. He says he does not have any actual memory

of that, but he does of earlier times. The Johnsons sold him to a zoo in a small

northeastern city that he could not remember. He grew and lived there for several years.

Before he started to ask himself why he was there and many other questions just like the

tiger had done already, he remembered a different way of life, which was, for him,

interesting and pleasant. On the contrary, the life at the zoo was agonizingly boring and

never pleasant acording to him. For the gorilla this was captivity. The biggest differnce

was that in Africa he was a member of a family. He explained this family to be more like

a hand in which they are the fingers. Like he said: “they are fully aware of being a family

but are very little aware of being individuals.” He considered Africa what little kids

dream of, the land where the mountains are ice cream and the trees are candy and the

rocks are bonbons. Wherever he turned there was something good to eat, where in the

zoo he was getting feed twice a day great masses of tasteless food.

When Great Depression started, zoos everywhere were forced to reduced the

animals’ population. A great number of animals were put down to sleep with the

exception of big cats, like he calls them, and primates. During that time the gorilla was

sold to the owner of a traveling menagerie (a collection of wild and unusual animals for

exhibition) and put in an empty wagon. To make story short, one rainy day, when there

was nobody around, there was a vistor that went to see the gorilla Goliath, as he was

thought to be. This man stood there and stared at the gorilla. The gorilla sat and the man

stood there for a couple of minutes and said “you are not Goliath” and left. he was

shocked and did not sleep or ate for a day or so.

Several days had passed when one evening the gorilla drank a whole bowl of

water and fell asleep as soon as he was done with it. They had added a powerful sedative

to his water. The next day he woke up in an different cage. At the beginning he could not

tell it was a cage because of it’s big, circular shape. The strange guy that told him he was

not Goliath was right, he was not Goliath, he was Ishmael. The name of this strange guy

was Mr. Sokolow. Mr. Soholow began to talk to the gorilla, but not the way the people at

the menagerie used to do. He began to suspect that the gorilla possesed real intelligence.

In very short time, Mr. Sokolow decided to teach the gorilla how to talk. In the absence

of that understanding, they both labored the impression that the skill would some day

appear. And over the next couple of years he thoght him all he knew about the world and

the universe and human history, and when he could not answer the gorilla’s question they

studied side by side. The story keeps on going, but in nineteen eighty five, Mr. Sokolow

passed away and left a fund that was allocated to the support of the gorilla which later

gets reduced to half by Mr. Sokolow’ s wife.

I associate to the story and to the gorilla maybe not in the sence that I’m a gorilla,

but in the way he was taken away from his home and was brought up to somewhere else.

In my case I was brought to the United States looking for a better place for my parents to

raise us, my sister and me. But the gorilla was taken away from it’s family and it’s habitat

to become an entertainment for people. And there was nothing he could do about it. I can

also connect to the gorilla and his story because since the moment we got to this country

we moved many, many times and so did he. That made hard for us to ever feel at home.

Fisrt they moved him from the forest in Africa to a zoo in a northeastern city, then he was

sold to a traveling menagerie, and after moved to the big, circular cage owned by Mr.

Sokolow.

The first couple of years that I lived in his country I kept asking myself why did

we had to move? What are we doing here? Why did this happened to us? Why, why,

why. Just how the gorilla said it happened to the tiger and it was then happening to him. I

understood how the gorilla felt. He felt traped somewhere where hi did not wish to be. He

wanted to be with his family, with the rest of the fingers like he called them. Just like that

I felt. I wanted to be with my aunt, and uncles, cousins, and grandparents, friends, and

other people I left there. But I guess I eventually became used to it, even if I did not wat

to.

It was hard overcoming those issues. The fact that we were alone in this country

and all our family was in Venezuela was horrible for us, and still is. There was a part that

the gorilla said, that even though he was we other gorillas they were not his family. The

same with me. There are people from everywhere in this country, even from Venezuela,

and I still do not feel like home, I do not have a family here like I the one I had there.

It was never the same…