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The giver essay about jonas community
The giver essay about jonas community
The giver's portrayal of the community proves that Jonas lives in a dystopian society
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Families are different everywhere you go, but is it possible that in a community all the families could be the same? Is there really such a thing as a perfect family? These people are trying to make a family perfect so that they will meet needs of the law. In Lois Lowry’s book, The Giver, she describes how families are formed and how they interact in a perfect society, how our different family style are different, and lastly she tries to show us that our imperfect families are better. It is much harder to form a family in Jonas’s society than in ours. These families can only be formed over time by officials who observe the people’s behavior and traits. They also have to apply for their spouse, but it could take up to two years before their
Lois Lowry's The Giver There is a lot of controversy on why the book "The Giver" was named "The Giver". Many different views are expressed in the piece which gives many different reasons for the name.
The essential thing to overcoming adversity is the ability to cause change in yourself and others. In the book, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, Jonas is singled out after he isn’t chosen during the Ceremony of Twelve. He has to learn to overcome the pain of being The Receiver of Memory. He also has to face the truth and discover who his real allies are. This helps him to become a changemaker because he grows. He grows by using the pain to become stronger mentally and physically. Ultimately, Lowry teaches us that to make a change, you must display curiosity and determination.
This community is not a usual everyday community. Here people don’t have to worry about poverty, crime, starvation and basically any typical world problems. Although, this community still has many problems. People still think this is a wonderful place to live but this community is a dystopia. In Mrs. Lowry’s book “The Giver” she explains how families function here as well as the both negative and positive point of views for family.
No world can be perfect, for the only way to have an ideal world is not to have a world at all. The reader soon discovers this in Lois Lowry’s publication The Giver. In this book, a boy named Jonas is taken through a journey in which he shapes his destiny through decisions he makes and trials he face in a supposed ideal world. One, by reading the book, uncovers the fact that this supposedly perfect world, because of its’ hold on an individuals emotion, the elders recanting people’s unalienable rights to privacy, the government employing an unrestrained grip of control, and the community’s over obsessive view on order, is actually an example of perfection taking a bad turn.
Every family members welcome those family members who are not blood related into a blended family. In her essay “Stone Soup,” Barbara Kingsolver describes the scene that a blended family is watching the boy playing soccer. Today, blended families are sprawling. My husband lived in the blended family when he was a child. Kingsolver indicates that “Any family is a big empty pot, save for what gets thrown in” (144). The term of “family” is not limited to those who have blood relations; family is the community where welcomes everyone to join.
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.
A family is a group of people who love, respect, and help one another no matter the circumstances. Family members are not confined to people you are related to or have married; they can include friends, acquaintances, etc. In this second paragraph on page 283, Howard states, “If our relatives are not, do not wish to be, or for whatever reason cannot be our friends, then by some complex alchemy we must try to transform our friends into our relatives.” This shows that blood relatives should come first in the matter or family, but there are circumstances in which this is untrue. For example, there are several family members that my immediate family, consisting of my mother, father, and myself, no longer associate with, nor do we plan to. My aunt (my mother’s sister) recently started heavily drinking alcohol again. This causes her to become volatile and vicious, and consequently takes it out on everyone who tries to assist her. She began to yell at my mother for no reason and called her a plethora of rude names accompanied by several cuss words. I found out about this rampage on my own and wanted to make her realize what she was doing was wrong, so I told her that she had no right to call my mom any of these names. We got into a bit of an argument, and she took it all out on my mother yet again. My uncle heard of this news and took my aunt’s side, fully understanding the entire story. Needless to say, we refrain from speaking to them for fear of them causing more drama. As Howard suggested, we have made friends with our neighbors and have adapted them into fitting in with our definition of family. We love them, we respect them, and we help them on a daily basis.
It’s not easy to build an ideal family. In the article “The American Family” by Stephanie Coontz, she argued that during this century families succeed more when they discuss problems openly, and when social institutions are flexible in meeting families’ needs. When women have more choices to make their own decisions. She also argued that to have an ideal family women can expect a lot from men especially when it comes to his involvement in the house. Raymond Carver, the author of “Where He Was: Memories of My Father”, argued how his upbringing and lack of social institutions prevented him from building an ideal family. He showed the readers that his mother hide all the problems instead of solving them. She also didn’t have any choice but to stay with his drunk father, who was barely involved in the house. Carvers’ memoir is relevant to Coontz argument about what is needed to have an ideal family.
In the beginning of the book Jonas was obedient and lived life by the rules. Jonas is raised like everyone else in the community. His life is planned out and expectations are set for every part of his life. ¨Instantly, obediently, Jonas had dropped his bike on its side on the path behind his family's dwelling¨ As the children grow they gain new small privileges. When Jonas turned into an Eight he was allowed to go into the community to volunteer. ¨The freedom to choose where to spend those hours had always seemed a wonderful luxury to Jonas; other hours of the day were so carefully regulated.¨ His family had a set routine that followed the rules of the community that everyone had to follow.
Has one ever wondered how extraordinary a perfect world would be, but did you stop and think what would happen if people were exposed to things without having experienced them before, nothing would be the same. In the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry there is a world that is a thought to be utopia by the people that watch over the community, but there is a boy by the name of Jonas that wants to show them that those who never take risk never grow, those who do not feel sorrow cannot know joy, and without memories, knowledge is useless.
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.
The idea of an ideal American family seems ridiculous today. Two hundred years ago many Americans may not have thought twice about the idea that there was a correct form that a family should follow. In the 19th century our country was young and was one of a few to have to come up with its own national identity in such a short period of time. In hindsight and with a bit of anachronism one could say that America dealt with its immigrant population with a great deal of hypocrisy. Instead of being a haven for immigrants America was almost a factory, attempting to take in different people and create a melting pot in which everything becomes alike. Every ingredient eventually loses its uniqueness.
A real family is so vital for a child to thrive with love and kindness. Family units provide knowledge and a place to live, but not a home. A home is not a building, but a place where you are surrounded by the people you love, a home is safe place you can come back to and find comfort in. “Two children-one male, one female- to each family unit,” families in The Giver are assigned like a job possition, families should not be assigned but made. Furthermore a true family is not just people that are related to you, they are the people that are the closest to you, the people that you confide comfort and
Is family important? Is it important to you? In chapter 16, Jonas was experiencing his first memory of love and family. After the memory, Jonas loved the feeling of how happy everyone in the family was during the memory. He learned about grandparents, and family love, and he wanted something like that. He wanted a real family. "He was in a room filled with people, and it was warm with fire-light glowing on a hearth. He could see through a window that outside it was night, and snowing. There were colored lights: red, green, and yellow, twinkling from a tree which was, oddly, inside the room. On a table, lighted candles stood in a polished golden holder and cast a soft, flickering glow. He could smell things cooking, and he heard laughter." Furthermore, Lowry is approaching the memory of family as very good and warm, it makes Jonas want a real family.
Families are what make up our society. Sure, there is the individual, but every individual is part of a family. Just like cells are the basic building blocks of life, despite the fact that organelles make up the cell. There are an infinite number of family models in our society. The one that seems to receive the most attention, however, is the model family. The model family supposedly internalizes everything perfect in our society. This family has been discussed in television sitcoms, movies, books, and in every-day encounters between friends. The prevalence of the model family, despite popular opinion, is nonexistent. There is no model family, much like there is no perfect human.