The narrator discovers an advertisement in the newspaper posted by a teacher looking for a student to help save the world. The narrator remembers how he was desperate, in his younger years, for this kind of opportunity. He reflects on the counterculture movements of his youth in the 1960s and 1970s, disappointed in the lack of progress since then.

The narrator goes to the location noted in the ad. On the wall is a poster that reads: “With Man Gone, Will There Be Hope For Gorilla?” (9), which the narrator identifies as a koan, or a paradoxical riddle. Behind a glass partition, the narrator sees a gorilla. The gorilla explains through telepathy that he was kidnapped as a child and brought to a zoo in the northeastern United States.

Discussing captivity, the gorilla tells the narrator how a tiger paces in its cage at the zoo asking “why,” but it cannot reason the question any further. The gorilla explains the question, describing how life in Africa was superior to life at the zoo; he says that animals in captivity, like the tiger, are much more preoccupied by their states than their free counterparts.