Here in my domain, there is no one to protect. I am angry to protect you, because that is what I was born to do.

When my father beat his chest, it was to say. A silverback uses anger to maintain order and warn his troop of danger. When describing why the picture on the billboard is not him, Ivan explains, “…I am never angry.Īnger is precious. Ivan, p.19 Though Ivan represses most of his memories, Ivan realizes that he always had an artist’s eye, even as a child. Humans have so many words, more than they truly need. The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate Buy Study Guide The One and Only Ivan Quotes and Analysis I think I’ve always been an artist. “But many days I forget what I am supposed to be. It is complicated: From the stories of the humans who saved Ruby, to the humans who killed her family, and Mack, the mall owner, who seemed to love Ivan as a son, yet kept him in a cage for so long.Īll this is punctuated with moments of poignant stinging truths. Ivan is forced to face deeply buried memories in order to come up with a plan to save Ruby from an existence like theirs. Then Ruby, a baby elephant is brought into the mall. At first Ivan seems almost content with his life and his painting. In this fictional account of his life, Ivan has a few other animals he is close to Bob the mongrel dog that shares his cage, and Stella the ill and aging elephant who lives in the small enclosure next to him.

Katherine Applegate has given him a voice that enables the rest of us to begin to understand what it might have been like for him all those years. Then he spent the next three decades in a cage in a mall in Washington State. It is based on the true story of Ivan, a silverback gorilla who after being taken from the wild, spent his first few years in a human home. The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate is one of them. The ones that grab you in a gut wrenching hold from the first sentence and leave you exhausted, wrung out, and ultimately a different person by their end. There are stories, and then there are stories.

The one and only ivan by katherine