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Essays on dystopian literature
The giver by lois lowry analyze
The giver by lois lowry analyze
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“The giver” is written from the point of view of Jonas, an eleven-year-old boy living in a futuristic society that has eliminated all pain, fear, war, and hatred. There is no prejudice, because everyone looks and acts essentially the same and everyone is unmistakably polite. The society has also eliminated any form of choice: at the age of twelve every member of the community is assigned a job based on their abilities and interests. Marriage is also controlled, as citizens had to apply for compatible spouses. When their children are grown, family units disperse and adults live together with Childless Adults until they are too old to function in the society. Then they are finally “released” from the society. In the community, release is death, but it is never described that way; most people think that after release, newchildren and joyful elderly people are welcomed into the vast “area” of Elsewhere that surrounds the communities. Citizens who break rules or fail to adapt to the society’s codes of behavior are also released, though it is of great shame.
Jonas lives with his father, a...
He starts to believe that a world of sameness where no one can decide or make choices for themselves is boring. Lois Lowry is warning readers that living in a world of sameness is not something to create as it is boring and dull, but if the world follows conformity and does not value diversity and difference enough, society could become that of Jonas’s. When he turns twelve, his job for the rest of his life is decided as the Receiver. His job is to receive all the memories the previous Receiver has held on to. While this is beneficial for Jonas as he is able to leave the society and his job of the Receiver behind and get freedom, the community is left without someone to take the memories from The Giver.
This book is about a community where everything is stainless. It is a blank world with no color or feelings. At the ceremony of Twelve, everyone is accepting their Life Assignments as they are going to the path of maturity. However, a boy named Jonas is instructed a special job with The Giver to learn about the power of feelings and lies. When he puts his power at his own risk, he gets his family and everyone he loves in danger.
Citizens are engineered to never be alone, which removes responsibility and the need for family bonds, showing that independent thinking is replaced with the ideology of world leaders. Since technology has removed the ability to reproduce for citizens, this removes responsibility, allowing a person to act impulsively and create meaningless relationships which leads to unethical decisions. Likewise, in the Giver family units are preplanned and are limited to two children by the elders of society. When Jonas asks his father if he loved him, the father replies, saying, "I enjoy you. " The society is very structured and strict which shows that the bonds with family are insignificant as they have to speak with restrictions and not allowed to freely express any emotions.
Like any child in the community, Jonas is uncomfortable with the attention he receives when he is singled out as the new Receiver, preferring to blend in with his friends. Once Jonas begins his training with the Giver, however, the tendencies he showed in his earlier life—his sensitivity, his heightened perceptual powers, his kindness to and interest in people, his curiosity about new experiences, his honesty, and his high intelligence—make him extremely absorbed in the memories the Giver has to transmit. In turn, the memories, with their rich sensory and emotional experiences, enhance all of Jonas’s unusual qualities. Within a year of training, he becomes extremely sensitive to beauty, pleasure, and suffering, deeply loving toward his family and the Giver, and fiercely passionate about his new beliefs and feelings. Things about the community that used to be mildly perplexing or troubling are now intensely frustrating or depressing, and Jonas’s inherent concern for others and desire for justice makes him yearn to make changes in the community, both to awaken other people to the richness of life and to stop the casual cruelty that is practiced in the community.
Set in a community with no climate, emotions, choices, or memories Lois Lowry tells the tale of Jonas in The Giver. Jonas is selected to be the receiver of memory, which means the memories of generations past, before the community was created, will all be transferred to him to hold. As Jonas receives memories his concept of the world around him drastically changes. Jonas starts out as twelve-year-old boy with perceptions different from those around him, he then begins to see the community for what it really is, and he makes a plan to change it.
Loss of Freedom in The Giver The Giver, a book written by Lois Lowry, questioned my ideas, thoughts and beliefs. The novel describes an ideal society, in which everything is supposed to be perfect, with all life’s problems solved. It is all about being happy with what the people have and not questioning their lifestyles because they did not know the difference between good and bad. The people are denied of their preferable way of life without their knowledge of how the real world is supposed to be. In the I can. However, the citizens of this society are not able to control their life; for example their choice of clothing, choice of loving and having feelings, or choice of family members. From all existing creatures, we humans differ because we are able to use our brain to make decisions. In the novel, the people of the given society have authority figures that show them how to live their life. “Katya, became a Nine and removed her hair ribbons and got her bicycle” (P The rules start with small things like what age one starts to ride a bike, which age group wears certain types of jackets, the clothing one wears each day, and even what to eat. In the real world, we humans make similar decisions for ourselves without thinking about it. People need guidance in their life to the right way of living but not a book of instructions. Many of us live each day dreaming of our future family and all the happiness we may get from that. I cannot imagine how it feels not to have freedom to feel and love. “Jonas, she said with a smile, the feeling you described as wanting? It was your the opposite sex. Beginning from early age, children are controlled not to feel or appreciate his/her opposite sex. The adults are made to take the pills to annihilate their sexual desires. When the children grow up and become adults, more decisions are made for them. When one is old enough to get married, the superior power chooses a mate for the person and is wedded. This is when I question the meaning of marriage. a future together, not a partnership that you deal with like a business. Although many cultures have different say in this sacred ceremony, most have similar ideas. To many people, love is affection based on admiration or common interests and warm attachment, enthusiasm or devotion. How can one live happy in life without the experience of such feelings? These individuals in the novel did not know better, if they knew how good it is to feel love or even know a good taste when it is good, then they would not be happy with the way of life in their community. “J What if they were allowed to choose their own mate?
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.
I read the book The Giver by Lois Lowry. This book was really good and shows what life would be like if everything were a utopia. This book is really engaging and almost has you engaged from the beginning to end. I like the way it was written out and it really shows what life can be like in the future. However, It does show negatives about everything being the same and that was something I thought really stood out. The Author gives great detail about the way of life.
“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.
Lois Lowry’s The Giver considers something the world takes for granted: personal empowerment. These simple day-to-day decisions create what the world is. Without self-empowerment and right to believe in a personal decision, what is the human race? The world can only imagine, as Lois Lowry does in The Giver. She asks: What if everything in life was decided by others? What if spouses, children, the weather, education, and careers were chosen based upon the subjects’ personality? What if it didn’t matter what the subject thought? Jonas, the Receiver, lives here. He eats, sleeps, and learns in his so-called perfect world until he meets the Giver, an aged man, who transmits memories of hope, pain, color, and love. Jonas then escapes his Community with a newborn child (meant to be killed), hoping to find a life of fulfillment. On the way, he experiences pain, sees color, and feels love. Irony, symbolism, and foreshadowing are three literary devices used to imply the deeper meaning of The Giver.
Throughout the history of the world, there has been many societies. All these societies had similar structures and ideas, but they all are different by their own special traditions and ways of life. Similarly, both our society and the society in The Giver share similar ideas, but they are different in certain areas. For example, they both celebrate birthdays and have family units, but they have their own way of doing so. Based on the celebration of birthdays and the formation of family units, our society is better than the society in The Giver by Lois Lowry.
Jonas’ community chooses Sameness rather than valuing individual expression. Although the possibility of individual choice sometimes involves risk, it also exposes Jonas to a wide range of joyful experiences from which his community has been shut away. Sameness may not be the best thing in the community because Jonas expresses how much he feels like Sameness is not right and wants there to be more individuality. Giver leads him to understand both the advantages and the disadvantages of personal choice, and in the end, he considers the risks worth the benefits. “Memories are forever.”
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 award winning novel The Giver by Lois Lowry shows young readers that a utopian society differs from the real world. In the book the utopians are unaware of the true meaning of choices, individual vs society, and memory which limits their ways of thinking. Without an idea of what any of these themes are, they are oblivious of how much they are being controlled. These themes play an important role in more than just Jonas’s life, without it, the book wouldn't be the same considering all the themes, for example choices.
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.