Summary
Narrated from the first-person perspective of Ivan, the novel’s protagonist, The One and Only Ivan opens with Ivan introducing himself. He is a silverback gorilla who lives in captivity at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade. He says humans don’t think gorillas can understand words, but, through patience, he has learned to understand human speech. He does not think humans are patient. Ivan used to be wild. He is large and mightier than any human. He is a great ape, a distant and distrustful cousin to humans.
Ivan introduces the other characters that live or work at Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade. Mack is his human boss, while Stella, an elephant, and Bob, a dog, are his dearest friends. He describes his glass-enclosed domain, beyond which he can see the flashing arcade lights and cars moving down the freeway. The billboard for the arcade depicts Ivan with his mouth open, as if letting out a ferocious growl. He says this is wrong, because he is never angry: silverbacks only use anger to warn their troop of danger, and in his domain there is no one to protect.
Every day Mack, dressed like a clown, leads the other circus animals through trick routines. After watching the show, Ivan watches humans hunt frantically through the mall, clutching bags full of things. No matter how full the bags, they always come back for more—an observation that touches on the theme of human greed. Ivan believes humans are clever, but poor hunters. Ivan says that humans come and leave fingerprints on his glass wall: he presses his nose on the other side, and it is the only print.
The mall cleaner’s daughter Julia gave Ivan a stuffed toy gorilla he sleeps with each night. He named it after his twin sister Tag, calling the toy Not-Tag. Julia was also the first person to slip Ivan a crayon and slip of paper through a crack in the glass. Ivan draws the things in his cage: apple cores, candy wrappers. Mack sells Ivan’s drawings for $20 apiece. Ivan has always been an artist: as a young gorilla, he would paint on his mother’s back using mud. Ivan thinks humans don’t believe gorillas have imaginations or think about the past and the future, and Ivan wonders if they’re right. Ivan recalls a time a boy saw him and said that he must be the loneliest gorilla in the world. Ivan has a TV in his domain. He and Bob, the dog, like to watch the tiny humans together.
Ivan comments that he has been alone in his domain for 9,855 days. For a while he thought he was the last gorilla on earth. Then he saw another gorilla on a TV nature program. He wondered all night where this other gorilla was, and if he or she was trapped in a box somewhere too. Stella doesn’t think Ivan will ever meet another gorilla. Stella is older, and remembers every detail of her life in the wild and her previous career as a traveling circus elephant. She has scars on her legs from the chains used to contain her. She used to have to balance on a pedestal while a poodle named Snickers lay on her head. Once she fell from the pedestal and injured herself, Stella was sold to Mack. At Big Top Mall, she is only bound by a rope.
Mack is in a foul mood after the mall circus attracts no customers for two days. Ivan plans to eat more food than usual, believing this will bring customers and please Mack. Bob tells Ivan his appetite is not the problem. Ivan digresses to explain how Bob used to be a stray, but he found his way into Ivan’s enclosure and became part of the circus.
Ivan has three visitors, two of which are children who spit and throw pebbles at his glass. He splashes in his pool and struts, performing for them, but they mock him by pounding their chests. He throws a me-ball toward them—balled up feces—and wishes the glass weren’t there.
Julia sits by Ivan’s domain at night while George, her father, cleans the mall. Together Ivan and Julia draw. She would like to be a famous artist when she grows up. She sometimes draws portraits of Ivan, who always looks a bit sad in her depictions. One afternoon Julia drew the dog, who didn’t have a name until she decided to call him Bob.
Mack works late in his office, then stops by Ivan’s cage drinking a bottle concealed by a brown paper bag. Mack and George discuss how George’s wife is sick but doing okay. Mack hands George some cash to buy the kids more crayons. After the humans leave, Ivan tells Stella he can’t sleep, and might be tired of his domain. Bob says that’s because it’s a cage. Ivan tells Stella he notices she’s limping more than usual. She admits that she is, but just a little. Stella tells Ivan to try remembering a good day from the past to get through his present, saying that there’s a difference between being unable to remember and refusing to remember. She helps him remember his keepers, who fed him and treated him well. He doesn’t have one at present because Mack can’t afford to hire one.
Mack gives Ivan a black crayon and Ivan looks for something black in his domain. He is excited to see a beetle has come to visit. He draws it, but Mack sees the picture and can’t tell what it is. Luckily Julia and George are with him: Julia correctly identifies the beetle, which Mack nearly stomps on before it skitters away. Ivan is pleased to have Julia, a fellow artist, around.
Analysis
The short opening chapters of The One and Only Ivan introduce the eponymous protagonist to the reader. Ivan, a silverback gorilla, has lived in among humans so long that he has adopted human habits and has learned to understand human speech. Here we see the first instance of the novel's motif of animals adopting human habits, and the major theme of confinement.
Based on the freeway billboard, Ivan understands that he is the main attraction at the mall. However, he does not relate to the depiction of him as angry. In an instance of foreshadowing, Ivan reflects that silverbacks only use anger to protect their troop, or family. Ivan lives in total isolation from other gorillas, and so he believes he has no one to protect.
The chapters go on to introduce Ivan’s fellow animals, along with the human characters of Mack, George, and Julia. Ivan and Julia can relate to each other because they are both lonely figures: with Julia’s mother fighting an illness, she accompanies her father to the mall while he cleans at night. The motif of loneliness also arises when Ivan recounts overhearing a boy say that Ivan must be the loneliest gorilla in the world. Similarly, Ivan finds that he always looks sad when Julia captures his image in portraits.
The motif of memory arises when Stella instructs Ivan to remember a good day from the past. Ivan insists that gorillas have poor memories, but Stella believes he is avoiding his memories. As a byproduct of a life of confinement, Ivan has blocked out his memories of freedom in the wild because they would be too painful to recall.
Stella the elephant’s infected foot introduces a note of dramatic irony: though she downplays the pain it is causing her, her condition will deteriorate. Her foot is also a symbol for animal mistreatment: Mack’s human greed makes him too cheap to give her the proper care and attention a captive elephant requires.
The scene in which Mack can’t see that Ivan has drawn a beetle but Julia can is significant because the event foreshadows the novel’s climactic scene, when Julia realizes that Ivan has created a message in his paintings. Ivan’s comment that it is good to have another artist around will prove to be more accurate than he could have anticipated.
