The Giver by: Lois Lowry
Jonas lives in a dystopian world where the government centuries before have taken away memories taking away destruction, danger, and pain, but also color, music, and art. Jonas starts seeing changings for only an instant and stirring( emotional dreams that the government couldn’t destroy so the people have to take pills). Jonas is then chosen to be the receiver, a job where Jonas must receive the memories of the world from the giver( the one who holds the memories). He has to receive the memories of joy such as the sun on a summer day and sledding down a hill in the winter, however Jonas must also take in the pain such as breaking a leg, and destruction of the years like war.
My favorite part of the book is not in the story itself I like the complex thoughts that form in my mind on the section of text I read that day, I also like the thought provoking quotes from this novel such as “Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of 'The Giver': the world where there are no bad words and no
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To think of a world where color no longer exist. Of course for the characters who have grown up into this colorless world it would be natural,but the fact that there is no music or art, even Jonas wants freedom from the robot like lifes the citizens live in.
I would recommend this book to older students due to the fact of how deep the book goes causing complex thoughts on how the world we live in can never be perfect. Even more me I feel that I don’t fully understand all of the concepts of what the book is made up of.
The message of the story to what I comprehend of it is that you can’t make a perfect world and that memories need to be shared, without memories/history the world repeats and doesn’t learn from mistakes. The elders believe that the Giver gives them wisdom for decisions, when the Giver really does what we should do in the real world, such as use history to not repeat the mistakes of the
Jonas, the protagonist, is assigned the job of holding memories for the community. This is so that not everyone has to experience sad or painful memories. The Giver's job is to transmit these memories to Jonas and, in doing so, reveals the wonders of love, and family, and pain, and sorrow to this young boy. Jonas begins to resent the rules of sameness and wants to share these joys with his community. After receiving his first memory, Jonas says, "I wish we had those things, still." (p. 84)
A common theme that’s developed in The Giver, by Lois Lowry, and The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is that people need their rights and freedoms. In both texts the citizens have no power nor rights. In The Giver, if people make honest mistakes they are released, a nicer term for being killed, not to mention they have no trail, and this is only one right the citizens don’t have. The receiver of memory is the only person in the community that sees what is wrong, because they have the memories of the past. One receiver, Rosemary, kills herself so the memories would go to the citizens, and influence them to rebel. Although she failed because she did not have enough memories to give the people, she influenced the next receiver, Jonas, to give
“Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given.” said David Levithan. In her dystopian novel, The Giver, Lois Lowry is able to convey the same idea as this quote. In this book, people created the Community in which the members are in a supposedly safe and happy environment. The Elders choose Jonas, the main character, to be the next Receiver of Memory and his training helps him to experience the past and see the deep flaws in the Community.
Lois Lowry describes a futuristic world with controlled climate, emotions, way of living and eliminating suffering in her book The Giver. The main character, Jonas, shows the reader what his world is like by explaining a very different world from what society knows today. Everything is controlled, and no one makes choices for themselves or knows of bad and hurtful memories. There is no color, and everything is dull. As he becomes the Receiver who has to know all the memories and pass them down to the next Receiver, he realizes his world needs change.
In Lois Lowry’s novel, “The Giver”, the characters with light colored eyes all have a rare gift; they see the community in a different way. Once Jonas, the main character, becomes the newest Receiver of Memory, he is told that only he and the Giver notice those differences. Jonas, uses the memories The Giver transmits to him to discover the differences in the community and Elsewhere. He learns about past experiences that have been transmitted to him; the newest Receiver of Memory. Jonas wants to leave the community to discover the truth about Elsewhere and what is there. While Jonas’ motivating factors to leave the community are for the selfish reason to experience life, he additionally leaves for their understanding of the past and to give them the ability to love through one another’s burdens.
The novel, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is an everlasting story that shows the importance of individuality. This novel is about a young boy named Jonas who was elected as the Receiver of Memories, a person who is given the memories from the world that existed before their current society, Sameness. In this society there is no individualism. People can not choose who to marry, or what they want to do for a living. Over time Jonas becomes more and more wise, and realizes that the supposedly perfect community actually has some very dark and negative aspects. The author, Lois Lowry is a 76-year-old writer who focuses her writing on helping struggling teenagers become individuals. Lowry had a very tragic childhood. After both of her parents were separated and killed in the middle of a war, she was devastated and the only way she was able to block and forget all of the horrifying things that were happening, were books (Lowry). “My books have varied in content… Yet it seems… that all of them deal with the same general theme: the importance of human connections,” Lowry explained in her autobiography. In the novel The Giver, Lois Lowry uses the literary elements symbolism, foreshadowing, and imagery to express the theme: importance of an individual.
In the book The Giver, written by Lois Lowry, a young boy named Jonas grows to the age of 12 and is selected to become the new receiver of memory and learns the cold truth about the life everyone in his community is living. The book which was fiction focused on the life of Jonas and the truths he learns about his society and the things taken away from it. He receives training to become the next Memory Receiver, who holds the memories of everyone in the world. The three topics addressed in the captivating book are the use of setting, characterization, and theme.
So all the memories everyone had from the past has now created a world that is today, enjoyable. “Call me the Giver.” (Lowry 110). Quoted by the only old man who holds all the memories from years and years of the past to give to the new Receiver, which is Jonas. It is not just the happiness of past memories holding on throughout lives. But pain is the biggest part of memory that anyone will have to endure. It is not just the mental pain we suffer through, it also could have a pain in the physical body and mind that the elderly man had to be tortured with throughout his life. Lois Lowry is a powerful writer inflicting and teaching in the minds of all and how most important and delicate memory is in the novel, The Giver, and how it must not be forgotten or fade away as it will determine your future and fill the gaps of mistakes individuals have
Jonas finally decides to change the world (at least the one he knows of), but he faces many obstacles trying to do so. Jonas speaks to the Giver about giving memories to the community . He wants to share them with everyone and change the way the community works. He wants to give them choices and show them that there are differences. The Giver says the only way the community will receive them is if Jonas goes to the beyond and loses his connection to them.
Set in a community with no climate, emotions, choices, or memories Lois Lowry tells the tale of Jonas in The Giver. Jonas is selected to be the receiver of memory, which means the memories of generations past, before the community was created, will all be transferred to him to hold. As Jonas receives memories his concept of the world around him drastically changes. Jonas starts out as twelve-year-old boy with perceptions different from those around him, he then begins to see the community for what it really is, and he makes a plan to change it.
Evelyn Sanchez (esanchez47@student.cccd.edu) Professor Leighton English 143, Final Essay 21 May 21, 2014 What the heck happened to Jonas? Topic #2. The Giver is actually one of my all-time favorite books, so I’ve looked into why she left the book so inconclusive in the past. The Giver is basically about a boy named Jonas who lives in a perfect society. He lives in a household with his two parents and his little sister Lilly.
Throughout the history of the world, there has been many societies. All these societies had similar structures and ideas, but they all are different by their own special traditions and ways of life. Similarly, both our society and the society in The Giver share similar ideas, but they are different in certain areas. For example, they both celebrate birthdays and have family units, but they have their own way of doing so. Based on the celebration of birthdays and the formation of family units, our society is better than the society in The Giver by Lois Lowry.
The sincere awareness of colors is not only forgotten, but dismissed into mere memories, and consigned into oblivion. Jonas, after gaining the awareness of colors, comes to the conclusion of wanting the choices that he could make in his daily routine. “I want to decide things! A blue tunic, or a red one?” (97). After The Giver asks Jonas why it is not fair that nothing has color, Jonas realizes that, for him, color is not just an nature. It also represents a level of individual freedom and choice that he has never known in his rigidly controlled society. This forces Jonas to face the disadvantages of living in such a community where self-expression is stifled. Jonas is talking about the sameness in the community and how he has to wear the same, old gray tunic. The Giver points out that choice is at the heart of the matter; when you can’t choose, it makes life very dull. “It’s the choosing that’s important” (98). Because the world in which Jonas has grown up has no color, the appearance of color in the story is important and meaningful. Color represents Jonas’s want for more individual expression. Colors brighten in a special way and Jonas, coming fro...
Jonas hates how his society decides to keep memories a secret from everyone. Jonas says: “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared” (Lowry 154). Jonas feels that memories, whether it be good or bad, should be shared with everyone. Furthermore, memories allow the community to gain wisdom from remembering experiences of the past. As for The Giver, The Giver disagrees with how the community runs things. He believes that memories should be experienced by everyone as well, because life is meaningless without memories. The Giver says: “There are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don’t want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable–so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen [...] It’s just that… without memories, it’s all meaningless. They gave that burden to me” (Lowry 103). The Giver is burdened with the responsibility to not share memories even though that is what he feels the community deserves. In addition, he believes the community lives a very monotonous life where nothing ever changes. Everything is meaningless without memories because the community does not know what it is like to be human without feelings. Overall, Jonas and The Giver’s outlooks on their “utopian” society change as they realize that without
However, as Jason’s training teaches him, this is not the case. His teacher, the Receiver of Memory, who tells Jonas to call him the Giver, transmits memories of the distant past to him. It is through these memories that Jonas discovers the meaning of snow, war, pain and love. The Giver tells him that these things existed before the people chose to go to “Sameness”. Ever since, they gave up those things in exchange for a world free of discrimination, crime and pain. However, realising the importance of wisdom gained through experience, they chose the Receiver to bear the burden of all the memories for them. Overwhelmed by all this information and being forbidden to share it with anyone, Jonas grows increasingly embittered against hi...