The society in The Giver by Lois Lowry is fairly broken and messed up. Everyone inside the community thinks that everything is under control and they like living that way, because they don’t know any other way to live. To them they live in the perfect world, a utopia. To everyone outside of the community it is a dystopia. They are controlled immensely. There are a few reasons why the community is a dystopia, they have no choice or freedom, and they don’t know what color, music, real emotion, and feelings are. 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 …show more content…
Nobody in the community knows what feelings or real, deep emotion is. They can’t live with music or color. They live in a bland community where everybody wears the same things. They live in a world of different shades of grey. They don’t have seasons, what would life be like without summer? Summers without sun wouldn’t be a problem in their community either because they have no weather. “‘What did you perceive?’ The Giver asked. ‘warmth’, Jonas replied, ‘and happiness’. ‘And--- let me think. Family. And something else--- I can’t quite get the word for it’. ‘It will come to you’. ‘Who were the old people? Why were they there?’ It had puzzled Jonas, seeing them in the room. The Old of the community did not ever leave there special place, the House of the Old, where they were so well cared for and respected. ‘They were called Grandparent.’ ‘Grand parents’” (123)? In this quote about Christmas Jonas learns more about family and being together, joyful. It’s sad that the community does not have anything special such as Christmas. Jonas learned the new concept (to him), of grandparents. He thinks grandparents are special but he doesn’t have real parents. At this point in the book Jonas understands real emotion and feeling for someone else, such as loving your family members, and he longs for that …show more content…
While reading The Giver, the community gives off a sense of control over everybody. As the book goes on form chapter to chapter, more rules and control are discovered. The people in charge chose for the whole community what everyone should wear, what everyone should eat, what children should learn in school, what to think, ect. From morning to night, any citizen from the community is being controlled. Everything they do in a day gets controlled. From what time to wake up all the way from the time they go to bed. “‘Jonas has not been assigned,’she informed the crowd, and his heart sank. Then she went on. ‘Jonas has been selected...Jonas has been selected to be our next Receiver of Memory’” (60). The community controls what job you have for the rest of your life until you enter the House of the Old. Jonas, who eventually finds out about how controlled everybody is, decides to leave. Anybody would want to leave that community after the truth was unleashed because they would realize how controlled they are. The community kills babies and old people too. They kill them because it’s part of the process of sameness, which is also another way everything is
The society in Lois Lowry’s book The Giver is like a freshly printed newspaper every page is crisp and clean, but when a page is crumpled or stained the only solution is to remove it. Problems in the town are created and solved by the same cause, euthanasia. Euthanasia, in the book, is used on multiple types of people; the young who would create problems for the society; the old; and anyone who threatens the order and structure of the place. The leaders euthanize people to protect their community. Usually in situations where many suffer and only one or few benefit, it is whoever is in charge that gets blamed, but since the rulers of the society are just as unaware as the people, it is the creators of the society that are at fault.
“What happened ten years ago?” Jonas asked. The main character in Lois Lowry novel, The Giver is Jonas, who lives in a Dystopian Society. The problem he forces is that he realizes that the community is hiding many secrets such as what release truly is. During the course of the story Jonas became conscious of what his community is doing to his life. Jonas inherited many different types traits, learning many life lessons and enduring horrible secrets from the community. He thoroughly shows that he was proud of what he is accomplishing such as becoming receiver, sympathetic toward the cruel tactics of releasing the innocent or the guilty, and curious to know how his life is going to change after being presented with his job in the society.
The Giver presents a community that appears to be perfect on the surface. Jonas's community is free of warfare, pain, sorrow and other bitterness we suffer in our society. The world seems to be secure and undergoes little conflict. Such a community seems flawless and is the idealistic society that we longed to live in. However , through Jonas's training, the imperfections of the Utopian community are revealed. The community allows little individual freedom and choice. In allowing only one person, the Receiver, to bear the memories of the world, the community frees itself from suffering and conflict. As a result, it gives up the ability to experience true feelings, passion, individual privacy, freedom and knowledge. To maintain the community's order, strict rules are applied to the inhabitants. "Releases" ( a less offensive term for kills) are performed to the citizens who jeopardize the stability and peace of the community. The inhabitants' careers and spouses are chosen by the Elders (or government).
Lowry writes The Giver in the dystopian genre to convey a worst-case scenario as to how modern society functions. A dystopia is an “illusion of a perfect society” under some form of control which makes criticism about a “societal norm” (Wright). Characteristics of a dystopian include restricted freedoms, society is under constant surveillance, and the citizens live in a dehumanized state and conform to uniform expectations (Wright). In The Giver, the community functions as a dystopian because everyone in the community conforms to the same rules and expectations. One would think that a community living with set rules and expectations would be better off, but in reality, it only limits what life has to offer. Instead, the community in the novel is a dystopian disguised as a utopian, and this is proven to the audience by the protagonist, Jonas. Jonas is just a norma...
The author Lois Lowry gets rids of anxiety, agony, disabilities, conflict, and hatred; the things our society would want to get rid of in our own. "How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made." ( Lowry 48) The people in the community has to be in order to maintain the peace and order of their society, in “The Giver” the community members have to submit to strict rules governing their behavior, relationships, and language. Freedoms and strong emotions add chaos to society. In “The Giver”, "He was free to enjoy the breathless glee that overwhelmed him: the speed, the clear cold air, the total silence, the feeling of balance and excitement and peace." (Lois 82) “The Giver” has the memory of freedom, and also the pain and conflicts that the human 's choice and emotion often have caused. "Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with difference. We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others." (Lois 95) The Community members, though they are happy, they don’t know the basic freedoms that our own society values. In Lois’s novels, societies that might seem to be flawless because all the citizens are healthy or clearly happy are revealed to be flawed because they limit the freedoms of the person. Lois Lowry book warn the reader, Don’t let this happen to your society. The lesson of “The Giver” is more optimistic than “Station Eleven.” Yet, there is fear in both novels. Both books, they give a message to the readers and leave the readers
society, everyone wears the same clothes, follows the same rules, and has a predetermined life. A community just like that lives inside of Lois Lowry’s The Giver and this lack of individuality shows throughout the whole book. This theme is demonstrated through the control of individual appearance, behavior, and ideas.
...t of change for the Community because of and how, through Jonas’s decisions, it could positively impact the Community’s way of life by letting the people exercise free choice in how they lived their lives. In the novel, The Giver, Lois Lowry implies that Civil Disobedience is sometimes necessary in order to improve the society’s way of life. This topics is seen all around the world today, people use civil disobedience every day when they stand up for what they believe in and we will continue to until the world is to their standards. The Giver once said “There’s nothing we can do. It’s always been this way. Before me, before you, before the ones who came before you. Back and back and back.” but Jonas proved him wrong. He showed him that there could be change even after all that time and I hope that maybe our world will have someone to prove all the cynics wrong too.
“Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice—the power of change, the essential function of life” (Ursula K. Le Guin). Preservation of individual freedoms and choice is paramount to preserve what makes humanity unique: the ability to choose one's own actions. Utopian societies often attempt the impossible: to create a perfect life for all of its inhabitants. Their attempt comes from the elimination of choice, such as the Alliance’s actions on Miranda in Serenity and in Lois Lowry’s The Giver, where society has adopted a Sameness model. In both of these contemporary examples, the elimination of choice allowed for a utopian society to flourish, yet soon they showed their true colors: dystopia. In these two works, what makes a seemingly utopian society actually dystopian is a loss of individual liberty and human emotions.
Even though both the society in The Giver by Lois Lowry and modern society are both unique in their own ways, our society is a better society to live in. Our society gives us more freedom to choose for our own benefits and
In this case, almost everybody considered that the release of elders was a time for celebration in recognition to the accomplishments of someone had made. For Jonas everything had changed, and that includes the fact of that some people was able to lie, even when as he remembered, since his childhood he was taught to never lie. While he was asking to the Giver “Release is always like that?... For the old? Do they kill the Old too?...[and he obtains he answer]… yes, it’s true” (Page 191-192, Lowry). Then Jonas started to have feelings of angriness and repulsion towards his parents and his community. He also felt miserable and wanted to change the
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. Since they have no reason to act out, they can live peaceful lives.
Jonas misses the way it was before he had memories where there was no pain or feeling, because everything was innocent. But he understands that although there was innocence nobody feels true happiness.Jonas thinks: “But he knew he couldn’t go back to that world of no feelings that he had lived in so long” (Lowry 131). Jonas wishes he could go back when everything was innocent and when he had no burden of pain, but although there was innocence the bad memories were stripped away to avoid the feeling of pain but also leaves everyone emotionless. But he knows it can never be the same again because of all the knowledge he gained from memories. He learns that memoires need to be valued, even the painful ones. Jonas feels that his community can change and things could be different. He thinks they should live in a world with memories. Jonas says: “Things could be different. I don’t know how, but there must be some way for things to be different. There could be colours [...] and everybody would have memories [...] There could be love” (Lowry 128). Jonas wishes that they could all have memories because everyone would be able to experience love. Love is one of the most important things in human life. He knows that there are bad memories, but without them, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the good ones. Eventually, with his feelings
The story in The Giver by Lois Lowry takes place in a community that is not normal. People cannot see color, it is an offense for somebody to touch others, and the community assigns people jobs and children. This unnamed community shown through Jonas’ eye, the main character in this novel, is a perfect society. There is no war, crime, and hunger. Most readers might take it for granted that the community in The Giver differs from the real society. However, there are several affinities between the society in present day and that in this fiction: estrangement of elderly people, suffering of surrogate mothers, and wanting of euthanasia.
Referring back to my previous point about family, one must ruminate that the Jonas’s family is a spitting image of this superficial existence. After Jonas begins to experience both pain and pleasure including memories of the warmth which family can bring he realizes the underlying dysfunction of his family. This is a momentous enlightenment for Jonas. In my opinion, one of the most pivotal points in the story is when Jonas asks his parents if they love him, and they reject that particular word. This occurrence demonstrates that their connection to one another is considerably weak as well as imperso...
The book The Giver is a Dystopia because the people in their community have no choices, release and because the people don't know or understand what life is. The world in the beginning of the book seems like a utopia because how smoothly it runs but it actually is a dystopia because no world or place ever is perfect. This place or the givers world still has many flaws.