The Giver Dystopian Analysis

The Giver dystopia essay
In the novel The Giver Lois Lowry has made a dystopian community.

A dystopia can be defined as a bad or unpleasant place where people live, where they might not have rights and freedom. It’s a place where not too many would want to live. In The Giver it is seen by the people living there as utopia but that is not always the case. Lowry’s dystopian novel, set in the future highlights certain Characteristics in The Giver .The world is quite unlikeable and bad to us as the readers, it has a really intense social control so that nobody really has much freedom or independence and in a way the story acts as a cautionary tale to help us understand that this world is not a good one.

One Dystopian characteristic, used by Lowry, is that people in the novel don’t get freedom or personal choice. In this dystopia they have elders in charge who make all the decisions on what they think is right. As the people in the novel only know what they have been told and what to do and will not understand if they are not given notice of something.one choice they don’t get is colour they see in black and white nothing ng else unless you’re a very important person in the community such as the elders or Jonas for example “Once, back in the time of the memories, everything had a shape and size, the way things still do, but they also had a quality called

colour.” In this quote the old giver is trying to explain what the colour Jonas is seeing to him as it is not part of old lifestyle.
The second dystopian characteristic, used by Lowry, is that the novel acts as a cautionary tale because if our world were to end up like this it would not be a nice place to stay. In a dystopian novel, there usually is a warning or caution behind the novel. In this case Lowry is showing us as readers that if we were to live in a world like The Giver it would be unfair and there would be no individual emotions. If we were to live like this we would have no emotions that are different we would all have the same emotions again and again.an example of this is when they talk about the naming ceremony “They were arranged by their original numbers, the numbers they had been given at birth. The numbers were rarely used after the naming ceremony.”(pg.70) this example is good because they start with numbers then a name that someone that’s not your “parents” give you.in the world Lowry has created there is a lot of conformity because everyone follows each other not acting individually and unique they all act and have the same emotions as each other making it very boring.
The Third dystopian characteristic, used by Lowry is the rules and punishments for not following the rules. In an dystopia novel there are usually rules to make sure everyone is the same and that no one is different and that people are all the same, it is the same in The Giver if you disobey the rules you are told off politely but if you do something completely against the rules you are released or in other words you are killed. If you are a twin when you are born the smaller twin is “released” as an example “I know, I know.it hurts, little guy but I have to use a vein, and the veins in your arms are still too teeny-weeny” this quote is from when one of the newborn twin is being “released” it’s the first time Jonas finds out what being released actually means after he had seen this he was not happy with the way people lived.

In conclusion if we were to live in this sort of world today it would be very unfair, boring and have no individualism.

The Giver is definitely Dystopian from my three points above because they have no freedom or individuality and there are many warnings through novel making us think about why this world could be good and bad place to live in. Lois Lowry has really got the point of dystopia across well. ‘’Behind him, across vast distance of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo’’ this is one of my favourite quotes from the book because he is finally free and we know

it.