Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
What is the importance of memory in The Giver by Louis Lowry
The giver literary analysis
Literary analysis on the giver
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Living in a perfect world is like living in an anthill. An ant does not think on it’s own, make it’s own decisions, and doesn't really have any own identity, just like the utopians. It is not worth living in a perfect world. The utopian society we are introduced to in the book, The Giver, has many different characteristics that make the perfect life unbearable. Examples of these things are The Receiver, the community, and the chief elders.
The Receiver has a job that involves much pain and suffering. The job of the Receiver is to inherit memories of the past, non-utopian society, and live them out. Some memories are painful while others are pleasant. The Receiver not only suffers through painful memories, he has to suffer knowing that there
…show more content…
The Chief Elders are the ones that choose assignments for every citizen, how their daily process goes about, and can decide whenever someone needs to be released. “A contributing citizen to be released was a terrible punishment” (2). The Chief Elders monitor every citizen from birth, seeing what their interests are. Then they choose an assignment for when the citizen turns twelve. If you don’t like the assignment given you will be released. There is no freedom in that. The Chief Elders also decide when a person is to be released if the individual steps out of line. The Chief Elders are like the “queen ant” of the community.
It is not worth living in a perfect world. From The Giver we gather much knowledge of how a utopia would not be good: The Receiver feels the pain of knowing there is more to life than life in the utopia, the community has no variety, and the Chief Elders take away all aspects of freedom humans have. For today’s society, living in a utopian society may not be far away. We today could undergo a terrible disaster and feel the need to live in a utopia. However to live in a utopia is to live like “ants,” and humans were not meant to be
The Giver was an example of a dystopian society. In this community citizen doesn`t had any freedom. It had a lots of information about why it was dystopian, but today I will talk about few thing. First reason was the natural world was banished and distrusted. Second was information, independent thought, and freedom were restricted. The last was they had fear of the out side world.
What determines a society to be either a utopia or a dystopia? Would it be everyone following the rules? In the book The Giver, by Lois Lowry, a new “Utopian” culture blossoms from the previously failed society. The Giver’s nation starts out with the intention of creating a utopian society; however, the strict limitations turn it into a dystopia where there are receivers, like Jonas, that hold the good and bad memories from the past culture. Jonas will experience great pain and great joy through his job as the Receiver instead of the whole community sharing the burden. The Giver’s world is a dystopia because of the following three reasons: they kill people that disobey the rules, they do not get to pick their own jobs, and, above all, they beat children if they do not use precise language.
My first reason why i think the giver community is a utopia is that there society works. By that i mean there has been no war or chaos the only time they have had disorder is when the old Giver died and the memories spreaded to everyone, which again prove that having the memories caused chaos. In chapter 11 Jonas ask the giver if his parents had sleds. The Giver laughs and says ¨It's a
In a utopian society nothing is perfect but it can be incorporated into the best attempt to make the society perfect. The similarities and differences of old utopias explain how a new utopia should be made, so that it survives the longest. For example, New Harmony and The Shaker were societies that are examples to compare to see what should be added and what should not be added. To help understand this; the meaning of a utopia is a place where everything is perfect and is mostly perfect in laws, government, and condition. With all of the aspects included, two old utopias can be compared to help dig deeper in the meaning of a real utopian society.
What do you think of a world where eveyone is equal and evryone has to follow all the same rules ? In the novel "The Giver" it's about a world where everyone in the society is equal and Jonas is apart of the community and has strange powers he does not understand and that's how he have the ability others dont. The book "The Giver" is an society that begins an utopia but is revealed as an dystopian as the story progresses. The society shown in "The Giver has many similarities and differences with our modern day society.
Utopia means a place of perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions. That definition does not match the society in The Giver. The punishment for breaking minor rules is too much for how little the rule is. Certain people get punished for breaking the rules which is unfair. If it was a utopia everything would be the same. They hide the past of your life. The most unbelievable thing is that they kill babies that aren't good enough for them. Shocking, right? Ponder this;, if you lived in a utopian society, do you think would it be like
As a result of not having the ability to choose, the Community will never (unless a drastic change happens) have to use conscious reasoning, making their life easier. For example, in today's world, it is an everyday struggle to make choices. One can feel massive pressure on what to eat, what to wear, even what to think. Sometimes, one can make the wrong choices, some with awful outcomes. Since the Community in The Giver has the benefit of not having the capability to make decisions, they live like robots, droning along and obeying all the rules. This makes life much easier and livable because no choice equals no conflict.
Is the United States a perfect community? With only 1 in 3 Americans claiming to be happy maybe the community in The Giver is best. Whether school, work, family, friends or drama is making someone unhappy, it is important to find a personal utopia. Meryl Davis said “I think success is finding happiness! Everyone certainly has different goals in life, and things that are important to them, and also things that are not important to them.” In The Giver everything is equal and their are no choices, while in the U.S. individuality is recognized and embraced. The US and the community in The Giver attract different people to them. Three subjects that The U.S. and The Giver have different views on are expenses, birthdays and deaths.
Louis Lowry’s The Giver uses a dystopian society as a metaphor to show how one lives without pain and lacks knowledge of other places in order to give the reader a warring that society will never be perfect. “The Giver offers experiences that enhance readers levels of inquiry and reflection.” (Friedman & Cataldo pp102-112) At First glance the novel's setting seems to be a utopia, where all possible steps are taken to eliminate pain and anguish. Often the difference between a Utopia and a Dystopia is the author’s point of view. The difference between dystopia society and a utopian society is that a “dystopia is a world that should be perfect but ends up being horrible. Imagine dystopia as a world where the government gives everything to everyone for free. You would think it would be perfect, but imagine if that government oppressed everyone. Essentially a Dystopia is a utopia that has been corrupted.” (Levitas p1) A dystopian society is “Any society considered to be a undesirable, for any number of reasons. The term was coined as a converse to a Utopia, and is most used to refer to a fictional (often near-future) society where social trends are taken to a nightmarish extreme. Dystopias are frequently frequently written as warnings, or satires, showing current trends extrapolated to a nightmarish conclusion. A dystopia is all too closely connected to current day society.” As defined in The Giver (Telgan pp162-182). This is why I believe that Lowery is giving the reader a warring about how our world is changing. We have the power to stop it before it happens if we listen to warring signs and act accordingly. If we don’t listen to those signs our society will become a nightmarish environment, to live in. “ The Giver demonstrates how conflict can force us to examine our most important beliefs about what is right and true. Conflicts can change our worldly view of thing.” (Freidmane & Catadlo pp102-112)
When mankind started to build a community, maintaining orderliness and balance also came with it. The citizens are trying to make a utopia or a perfect society for them to live in. Of course, as the years passed, it has come to their senses that there has to be someone who can lead the society to greatness. That 's the time they 've started to appoint leaders that are capable of maintaining the very stronghold of the society. These leaders have the power to control their society to their will. Unfortunately, some of these leaders became deprived of power which blinded them that instead of making a utopia, they 've made a dystopian society that drastically affected their citizens. Similar to the novel, The Giver by Lois Lowry. Jonas, the protagonist in the novel did not know the state of the society he lives in
The book The Giver is a dystopian book because you don’t get to make any of your own decisions. You would never know the truth about release. You would never experience life how you should experience it. The world may seem perfect from someone’s view inside the community, but from the outside it is harsh and horrible. Their world could be turned into a utopia eventually, but as of right know it is a
I believe everyone has an ideal of a perfect society. No one wants to live in a society where there is violence and evil. In my opinion, a utopian society would consist of very few government mandated laws and a desirable constitution. People would get along, and everything would be perfect. In order to achieve such an ideal, people must do anything in their power to manifest what they have envisioned. Human nature, like any other animal’s nature, causes us to become competitive, especially with each other. In practice, the attempt to have a perfect society leads to the creation of a dystopian society where people are unhappy, afraid, and not treated fairly.
The community in the giver has no freedom, they are controlled by everything. They don’t know the true meaning of choice. They wake up to live another plain day with no choice. They don’t know what the feeling of choice is. They don’t
Just because everything is pre-planned, life in Utopia is so very monotonous that people had to adopt a pleasure-based approach about life, based on happiness and happiness alone: “In fact, they do everything they can to make people enjoy themselves.”²⁹, “Here they seem rather too much inclined to take a hedonistic view, for according to them human happiness consists largely or wholly in pleasure.”³⁰
A utopia does not necessarily need to be absolutely perfect to be accepted by all the people. For example, in Brave New World, John says, “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want