Chapter 12 Summary

The narrator tracks down Ishmael's new owner, a hard-eyed black man named Art Owens. Owens wants $3,000 for Ishmael, and the narrator, arguing Ishmael is a very old animal, cannot move him below $1,800. After midnight the Friday-night crowd thins and the narrator is allowed to see Ishmael. He is sleeping, sitting upright, wrapped in his blankets. He does not want to talk, but Saturday will offer no opportunity, so he agrees to continue talking about "those who know good and evil" (Takers) and "those who live in the hands of the gods" (Leavers). Ishmael asks what happens to the latter kind of people that does not happen to the former. The narrator's first answer turns the question around: they do not force others to live the way they live. Ishmael wants to focus on the effects of the Leaver lifestyle, and the narrator groans...