The One And Only Ivan

Ivan says that humans call him “the Freeway Gorilla,” “the Ape at Exit 8,” and “the One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback” (2). Humans assume Ivan can’t understand their words, but he can, though he knows their names are “not me”—rather, he is “just Ivan, only Ivan” (2).

Ivan says he comprehends human language, but that’s “not the same as understanding humans” (3). Ivan used great patience to learn how to speak, as “gorillas are as patient as stones” (3). People, on the other hand, are without patience, filling the world with meaningless words “even when they have nothing to say” (3). 

Ivan was once a wild gorilla, and he “still look[s] the part” (4), with the silver back of a mature male gorilla. Ivan believes humans find his large size threatening—they see it as “a test of themselves” (4)—but he knows there’s a genetic connection between gorillas and humans, whom he thinks of as “chimps,” or “ill-mannered clowns” (5).

Ivan describes his home at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, where there is a ring of benches for people to sit and watch several wild animals in cages. Ivan knows the mall’s name because he’s heard the mall “boss” (6), Mack, say it aloud. Ivan’s cage, which he calls his “domain” (7), is situated at one end of the ring, with three glass walls, one of which has a hole Ivan made with a baseball bat Mack gave him but took away. The fourth wall contains a painted jungle landscape. Next to Ivan’s domain is that of Stella, an elephant, who along with the stray dog Bob make up Ivan’s “dearest friends” (7). Because of the glass walls, Ivan can see the entire mall and “a bit of the world beyond,” including the freeway sign advertising the mall and “THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, MIGHTY SILVERBACK!” (8). Although Ivan can’t read, he’s heard Mack read the sign aloud, and it contains a picture of an “angry” gorilla meant to be Ivan—but Ivan is “never angry” (9). Anger’s purpose is to protect others, and Ivan has “no one to protect” (10).

Ivan describes the other animals who perform tricks at the Big Top Mall, including a seal who died from eating the pennies children threw in her pool. Led by Mack in a clown costume, the animals perform in their small circus daily at two, four, and seven o’clock, but Ivan doesn’t do tricks—Mack says it’s “enough for [Ivan] to be me” (12). Ivan watches the humans shop at the mall, which he calls “forag[ing]” with “their green paper, dry as old leaves,” and he considers them “lousy hunters” (13)—they always need to return and buy more.

Ivan is aware that some animals live “unwatched” lives, but he does not: behind the glass that “says you are this and we are that and that is how it will always be” (14), Ivan is constantly observed by humans, his “uninvited visitors” (14).

Ivan likes to throw what he calls “me-balls” (15)—balls of dried dung—at his human visitors, but he still gets bored. Ivan’s domain contains only a tire swing, baseball, plastic pool, an old TV, and a stuffed gorilla given to him by Julia, the daughter of the mall janitor. Ivan sleeps with the toy every night and calls it Not-Tag, after his twin sister, Tag.

Ivan goes on to describe 10-year-old Julia, who has a “wide, half-moon smile” (16) and, like Ivan, is an artist. Julia gave Ivan his first crayon and paper through the hole in his cage, and because Ivan had watched Julia drawing, he was able to do so as well. Now, Julia draws imaginary scenes, “pieces of a dream” (16), while Ivan draws candy wrappers and banana peels. When he’s drawing, Ivan is never bored. Mack sells his drawings for $20 each, and when Ivan no longer feels like drawing, he eats his crayons.

Ivan believes he’s “always been an artist” (19). He remembers, as a baby in the wild, seeing “shapes in the clouds” (19) and drawing pictures in mud on his mother’s back.

Ivan hopes that like Julia, he can one day draw “worlds that don’t yet exist” (20), even though humans think gorillas have no imaginations.

Ivan says he used to receive many visitors, but now he’s, as Mack puts it, “not cute anymore” (21). Recently a little boy called Ivan “the loneliest gorilla in the world” (21), but Ivan is used to his solitary existence.

Ivan and his dog friend, Bob, love to watch the old TV Mack put in Ivan’s domain. Ivan likes cartoons with “bright jungle colors” (23), while Bob likes bowling and cat-food commercials. They also watch Westerns, where it’s clear who’s good and who’s bad, and “the good guys always win” (24). According to Bob, this is “nothing like real life” (24).

Ivan says he’s spent 9,855 days alone in his domain. He used to believe he was “the last gorilla on earth” (25), but then he saw a gorilla in a nature show on his TV. He wondered, if this male gorilla existed, could there be a female gorilla somewhere too? Or are those two male gorillas all that’s left, both “trapped in our own separate boxes” (26)?

Ivan introduces his elephant friend Stella, who is older and wiser than Ivan—Stella is “a mountain,” while Ivan is “a rock,” and the dog Bob is only “a grain of sand” (27). After the mall closes, Stella tells Ivan about her childhood, which she remembers much better than Ivan does his own. Stella once starred in a “large and famous circus” (28), where the leader abused her with a claw-stick if she made a mistake. Now Stella performs some of the same tricks at the Big Top Mall.

Ivan sees Stella’s trunk as a “miracle,” capable of grasping a peanut or tickling a mouse, but she can’t use it to unlock the door to her “tumble-down domain” (30). After Stella injured her foot in a circus trick, Mack bought her from the circus. Now Stella still limps, and last winter she had a severe infection and fever that lasted five “very long” days (31). Ivan still isn’t convinced she’s “completely better” (31).

Two days pass with no visitors to the mall, and Mack, in a terrible mood, throws a soda can at a macaw and threatens to sell all the animals. Ivan thinks the humans like watching him eat, so maybe if he eats more, more people will visit. Tomorrow he’ll eat at least 50 pounds of food—“that should make Mack happy” (33). 

Ivan shares his plan to eat more with Bob, the stray dog who has no “permanent address” but spends quite a lot of time at the mall, and Bob tells him “the problem is not your appetite” (34). Bob should know, as he’s quite familiar with scavenging for food to survive. Bob is a “tiny, wiry, and fast” (34) dog with a tail that conveys “meanings within meanings,” leaving Ivan “dizzy and confused” (35). Unlike gorillas, who have “uncomplicated” (34) emotions and don’t need tails, Bob uses his tail to express happiness, sadness, warnings, and more.

Ivan goes on to describe Bob’s past: Along with his three brothers and two sisters, humans abandoned Bob on the freeway as a puppy, and only Bob survived. Three nights later, Bob found the mall and the broken corner of Ivan’s cage, snuck inside, and slept on top of Ivan’s belly. Ivan was unsure how to react to “the comfort of another’s warmth” on his body, and he ended up staying still all night, “for fear of waking Bob” (36).

Ivan once questioned why Bob didn’t find a human home, and Bob responded: “I am a wild beast, my friend: untamed and undaunted” (37). When Ivan suggested he could be like Snickers, a trained poodle who performs in the circus, Bob was disgusted and declared that poodles “are parasites” (37).

Calling the gorilla “Picasso,” Mack gives Ivan a new yellow crayon and paper and tells him to “earn your keep” (38). Ivan wonders who Picasso is and draws 10 bananas, which Mack sees as only “scribble[s]” (38).

A woman and two children observe Ivan; the boy spits at the gorilla and the girl throws pebbles. Ivan states, “Sometimes I’m glad the glass is there” (40).

After the mall circus, the children watch Ivan again, and he does his best to entertain them, “grunt[ing] and hoot[ing]” (41), but they throw more rocks. Ivan throws a dung me-ball at the kids, calling them “slimy chimps” and thinking “sometimes I wish the glass were not there” (41).

Ivan is sorry for calling his visitors slimy chimps. His mother, he says, “would be ashamed of me” (42).

Ivan describes Julia, the mall janitor George’s daughter, who always sits near Ivan while her father cleans. Ivan believes she’s drawn to Ivan “because we both love to draw” (43). Julia’s mother Sara used to clean the mall as well, but then she became sick and stopped coming. Julia always asks if she can clean with her father, but he tells her to do her homework instead—although she’d prefer to make art. Julia sometimes draws Ivan, depicting him as “an elegant fellow” (44) who is never angry—but “always [..] a bit sad” looking (45).

Julia not only draws Bob “flying across the page” (46), with wings or a tortoise shell—she also “gave Bob his name” (46). The first time Julia drew Bob, she studied him first, “the way an artist looks at the world when she’s trying to understand it” (47). When she finished drawing the “cunning” but “wistful” dog (47), she had also written his name: Bob. To learn his name, Julia said, she “had to draw him first” (47).

Bob does not allow humans to touch him, but sometimes Ivan spies him sitting by Julia, letting her scratch behind his ear.

Mack stays late in his office, then stops and stares at Ivan a long time, drinking from a beer bottle. Mack asks Julia what she’s drawing, and she says it’s a picture for her mom. Mack asks Julia’s father how his wife is, and George responds that “she has good days and bad days” (50). Before he leaves, Mack gives George some cash and tells him to buy Julia new crayons.

Ivan can’t sleep, and he tells Stella he’s “tired of my domain” (51). Ivan has also observed Stella limping more than she normally does, and she admits her leg is hurting.

Ivan still can’t sleep, so Stella suggests he think about “a good day” (53) from his younger years. Ivan says he can’t remember his past like Stella can, and Stella points out the “difference […] between “can’t remember” and “won’t remember” (53). Ivan sees the truth of her words—he’s had to “work on” not remembering—and Stella says that memories are important, for “they help tell us who we are” (53). Ivan remembers his keepers, including his favorite, Gerard, who once brought him “fat, sweet strawberries” (54), but Mack hasn’t been able to afford a keeper for a while. 

Mack gives Ivan a black crayon, and when Ivan spots a beetle in his domain, “black as a starless night” (57), Ivan decides to draw the bug. Ivan works hard to draw “something new,” this beetle with his antennae and his “sour expression” (57), but when Mack sees the picture, he thinks it’s a “big, black nothing” (58). Julia, however, identifies the picture as the beetle near Ivan’s pond—and Mack’s response is to try to squash the bug, who runs away. Ivan appreciates having, in Julia, “a fellow artist around” (59).

The animals realize a new animal will soon arrive at the mall. As Ivan explains, impending change makes humans smell “odd”—“like rotten meat, with a hint of papaya” (60).

Stella thinks the new animal at the mall will be a baby elephant—Stella can hear this young elephant “crying for her mother” (61).

Ivan asks Stella to tell him and Bob “the Jambo story,” and he notices her foot has turned “an ugly deep red” (63) with infection. Stella tells the story, about a boy watching gorillas at the zoo, and she defines a “good zoo” as “a wild cage. A safe place to be” (64), where animals have space and people don’t harm them. At the zoo, the boy fell in the gorillas’ cage, and the silverback, Jambo, gently touched and then guarded the child. The people watching were sure Jambo would kill the boy, but rescuers were able to retrieve him unharmed.

Stella says humans were perplexed that Jambo didn’t kill the boy who fell in his cage, but Ivan can’t understand their reasoning—why would the silverback kill a young, frightened boy who was, “after all, just another great ape” (67)? Bob asks Ivan why he and Stella aren’t in a zoo, and Stella answers—perhaps ironically—that they’re “just lucky” (67).

A baby elephant named Ruby is delivered to the mall, her purpose, according to Mack, to attract visitors and “save our sorry butts” (69). But Ruby won’t leave the truck, and Stella is angry. When Ivan tries to comfort the older elephant, Stella insists “it will never, ever be okay” (70) as the chapter ends.

Ruby still won’t leave the truck, so Mack frees Stella, hoping she can entice Ruby out. Stella hurries to the truck despite her injured foot, and after Stella curls her trunk around the baby elephant’s, the young Ruby finally ventures out. Ruby is “so small she can fit underneath Stella with room to spare” (72), and Mack explains to the men helping him that Ruby was a cheap buy from a circus that went bankrupt. Stella leads Ruby toward her domain, but Ruby hesitates and Mack, frustrated, almost hits her with a broom. Stella protects Ruby and guides her inside, while Bob observes the “[p]oor kid” (74).

Stella and Julia both give all their attention to Ruby and none to Ivan, and Bob tells Ivan he’s “old news” (75). Julia draws Ruby, and Ivan “pout[s]” (75). Then Julia realizes she’s been ignoring Ivan and gives him paper to draw the elephant too—but Ivan just eats the paper.

Ivan can’t keep moping long, as “gorillas are not, by nature, pouters” (77). Once Julia’s left, Ivan asks Stella about Ruby, and Stella tells her Ruby was born in the wild, like the two of them were. Circus workers chained Ruby to the floor for 23 hours each day, trying “to break her spirit” (78)—just as they once did with Stella. 

Ruby introduces herself to Ivan and asks if he’s a monkey, followed by many other questions about everything she observes. Ruby refers to Stella as her “aunt” and wonders where the other elephants are. She tells Ivan she once lived with her mother, aunts, sisters and cousins—but “humans killed them” (81) all.

Stella appears “so happy” caring for Ruby—petting her, leaning against her, almost dancing together—that Ivan enjoys watching her more than “any nature show I’ve ever seen on TV” (82).