In the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry, the receivers are the only people who have feelings and memories. The elders are the people who choose what the best is for their people in the community and sometimes they go to the receiver for help on making the right decisions. The people from the community do not see color, or have freedom on making a decision for them. There is no love, feelings, and grandparents. Jonas is assigned to be the next receiver of the community; He was trained by the giver, who transfers memories of the pain and pleasures of life, who also shows him the truth and reality that is hidden to the community. Jonas’s community does not represent the ideal of society because there are no choices or distinctions between men and women. This people from the community are assigned to a role in the community, where they do it until they are old and sent to the House of the old and wait for their release. There is one positive thing about Jonas’s community. The community is the people from the community are given the basics need for their survival. “He watched while Mother tidied the remains of the morning meal and places the tray by the front door for the collection crew” (36-37). This statement had given us the idea that the whole community is being feed. The elder of the community, gives each family unit the same things so they all could have equal conditions, and evict social classes in the community. In Jonas's community, there is no distinctions between man and women since they are born they are given numbers, and until they are assign to their parents they are given a name. Jonas was taught to ignore the differences between people. Even was not one of the rules by the elders and considered by the people in the com... ... middle of paper ... ... all aspects of life were controlled, and all things were equal. In the community, there is not freedom of choices at all except for choosing where to do their community help; all decisions are made by the elders. It has been discussed how Jonas’s community do not represent a perfect or ideal society. One of the main reasons given that if a citizen in the community does not do what they elders tell them to do; they are going to be release, meaning kill them. Some of the other things mentioned are the types of things that they do not have freedom of choice. Jonas’s society was to believe to be the ideal of society having given the basics things for their survive, but at the end it reveals that the people in the community are not being told the truth about the things the elders do, or knew for examples the colors, feelings and all the things that were before sameness.
“Critics and censors all agree that Jonas's situation in The Giver is horrifying. Through a series of shocking events, he discovers that...his people literally have limited vision and can not make decisions without the Giver's help” (Lord, Elyse). Being able to see different colors, Jonas thinks it would be nice if everyone could choose, which color shirt to wear in the morning. Jonas saw the importance of decision making when realizing it is essential to happiness. He notices, his people does not have the option of choice. They cannot see the red apple, the green grass, or the blue sky. There is only this sameness of black and white. Each year Jonas’s people follows the same concepts and routines, without any questions being asked. The option of choice was taken away from them hoping to build a utopian society. Jonas understands that having a choice helps to think for ourselves. Without it, in some ways life can be meaningless. In some ways the community as well as the chief elders, sees the Giver/receiver as a God. Reason being, the citizens, are only comfortable with things that are familiar to them. When not knowing how to deal with a situation, they come to the giver for advisement. He is familiar with all things known and unknown. Knowing this, they believe only he can truly give the right
“I knew that there had been times in the past-terrible times-when people had destroyed others in haste, in fear, and had brought about their own destruction” (48). In the old days, when people in Jonas’s community valued individual needs, there were lots of terrible happenings: violence; and then the society ended up with general welfare and safety. It is difficult for us to think of a world without color, freedom, music and love, but in The Giver, the society denounces these things in order to make room for peace and safety. In The Giver, by having a society based on general welfare they gave safety to their people. No violence, no criminal activities, nor homicides.
Jonas and his family lived in the future in a community called "Sameness", where there is no pain, color, choices nor memories.
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. When he becomes a 12, he goes through a huge ceremony and all the elders assign them their jobs. In this community, there is no lying, stealing, racism, pain, sunlight or color. Jonas was chosen to be The Receiver, and he didn’t know what to do because this job was such a big deal. Jonas then goes through training with the current Receiver, who is now The Giver. Training consists of The Giver passing down the memories from when the community was not what it is today. Memories that are passed down are things that are normal to us. Memories of sun, snow, pain, and sorrow.
And choose wrong?” (P.98). From reading this, I feel that the community was able to control problems such as divorce, rape, teen pregnancy, and AIDS. They all are given a life that is predictable, orderly and painless. Mostly, they have no memory or experience. In reality, we learn from our mistakes to be better each day. Experience is the best teacher in the world; unless one goes through sorrow, he or she will never know how it feels. “Warmth, Jonas replied and happiness. And let me think. Family, that it was a celebration of some sort, a holiday. And something else I can’t get the word for it. Jonas hesitated; I certainly liked the memory, though. I couldn’t quite get the word for the whole feeling of it, The Giver told him the feeling that was so strong in the room is love” (P.125). Family in the novel is described as a group of people that have a unit or bond that they share each day together.
...nts to pick his own spouse. Jonas is tired of sameness and little choices. “What if… he could choose? Instead of sameness”(pg98). He wanted to be free of sameness. Louis Lowry made it clear through Jonas that freedom of choice is a lot more important then sameness.
“The Giver” a novel by Lois Lowry (1993), is an, engaging science fiction tale that provides the reader with examples of thought provoking ethical and moral quandaries. It is a novel geared to the young teenage reader but also kept me riveted. Assigning this novel as a class assignment would provide many opportunities for teachers and students to discuss values and morals.
Jonas was an obedient kid and mature person, he was also clever and always obeyed the rules in his community. The only thing he was worried about was if he would have a good job. Jonas viewed his society the way everyone else did , but it changed when he first experienced his transference of the memories .
Jonas gets access to many things in his community.For instance, Jonas’s rules said “You may lie.”(65)Jonas was allowed to lie to other people if he did not want to answer truthfully.One detail from the text is ”You may ask any question of any citizen and you will receive answers.” (65)Jonas could ask any question to any person he wanted and would get an answer no matter what.The author stated that “There must have been hundreds-perhaps thousands- of books, their titles embossed in shiny letters.” (71)Jonas has access to all the books in the annex room, unlike the other people in his community.For example ”The training required of you involves pain.”(59)The training has pain, but it’s so that the rest of the community doesn’t have to experience it.
To begin with, though strict rules and rituals executed in Jonas's community are essential to an orderly society, they can also efface villagers human rights including individuality, dominating in villagers lives instead of supervising them. Under strict laws such as release and stirring reports, the villagers in Jonas's community are deprived of their individual uniqueness and become identical. For example, as shown at the beginning of the book, For a contributing citizen to be released from the
Jonas use to believe in everything that his society told him. That is until he received the memories. He started to realize things that no one else in his community realized. Then he was isolated.
You know everything about the past and the present from your life, but the citizens of Jonas’ community don’t. Everything is hidden from them, except for Jonas and The Giver, who have all
“Climate Control. Snow made growing food difficult, limited the agricultural periods. And unpredictable weather made transportation almost impossible at times. It wasn’t a practical thing, it became obsolete when we went to Sameness” (83-84). The words of the Giver point out that sameness would help the community to produce more food. Choosing sameness had many cons, people are killing babies to keep others comfortable and Jonas starts to become so distressed he makes plans to leave. Sameness was a mistake from the beginning, for the way people
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
But the Giver argues and asks “Do you know what is means to love someone? Possibility of love? With it comes hope, faith and a beautiful feeling. “ But the commander says that people are weak, selfish and when people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong. Giver believes that in this community “people are living the life of shadows, of faint, distant whispers of what once made us real.” People are living in the shadow, because their right to choose is taken away. The movie does not show what happens after Jonas crosses the boundary of memory, but we can hope that after everyone got memories back they found the real