The Truman Show vs. the Giver

1576 Words4 Pages

Life is a very valuable asset, but when lived on someone else’s terms its nothing but a compromise. The seemingly perfect image of Utopia which combines happiness and honesty with purity, very often leads in forming a dystopian environment. The shrewd discrepancy of Utopia is presented in both the novel ‘The Giver’ by Lois Lowry and the film ‘The Truman Show’ directed by Peter Weir. Both stories depict a perfect community, perfect people, perfect life, perfect world, and a perfect lie. These perfect worlds may appear to shield its inhabitants from evil and on the other hand appear to give individuals no rights of their own. By comparing and contrasting the novel ‘The Giver’ and the film ‘The Truman Show’, it can be derived that both the main characters become anti-utopian to expose the seedy underbelly of their Utopian environment which constructs a delusional image of reality, seizes the pleasures in their lives and portrays a loss of freedom.

One of the major differences between the film and the novel is the depiction of the delusional image of reality. However, it still manages to bring forth the dystopian image of both their Utopian societies. In The Truman Show, life is a real life play in an environment that provides comfortable lifestyle and happiness at the cost of reality. The producer of The Truman Show, Christof states, “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented”. This message is the underlying theme in the story and as such, will foreshadow Truman’s acceptance of a delusional reality in the film. Meanwhile, in the film everyone except for Truman is acting and not living an authentic life. There is no sense of “real”; no real affinity, no secrecy, and no faith, all of which Truman is blindly unawar...

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...e of reality, seizes the pleasures in their lives and portrays a loss of freedom. Both their perfect worlds were full of lies and instead of shielding its inhabitants from evil they gave individuals no rights of their own. What appeared in the beginning as a perfect utopian society was actually an imperfect dystopian environment.

Works Cited

Lowry, Lois. The Giver. New York: Laurel Leaf , 1993. Print.

The Truman Show. Dir. Peter Weir." Perf. Carrey, Jim. Paramount Pictures: 1998, Web. 24 July 2011..

"Hope - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary." Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Merriam-Webster. Web. 24 July 2011. .

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Giver.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 24 July. 2011.

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