If you cannot remember the pain in life, you will not feel the pleasure in living. If you do not feel the loss of losing someone close to you, you never felt the love. If you do not know what is wrong, you will not know what is right. Yet, the people who live in Jonas’s community, presented by the book The Giver, by Lois Lowry, have lived peacefully without all the pain, suffering, loss, and wrongdoings. Everything was just…perfect. But soon Jonas realizes the truth: You really cannot live a good life without pain; the pain makes the other things in life worth living for. Once the truth is uncovered by Jonas, he figures out even more secrets that ruin the image he has of the perfect community he lives in. Basically, he does not see it as this perfect place he grew up in, anymore. This ‘utopian’ community is definitely not utopian because no one here can precisely express themselves, the people have adapted to ‘sameness’, and they perform inhuman tasks, which all add up to a less-than-perfect society.
To start off, the citizens in Jonas’s community are incapable of showing accurate feelings. They do not fully understand what sadness feels like, or what worry feels like, or what anger feels like, and that is inhumane. Take Lilly, Jonas’s little sister, for example: she thought she “felt angry because someone broke the play area rules.” However, Jonas realizes that she just felt exasperated and impatient because he knows that real anger is more passionate than what she had described. He acknowledges these things solely due to his training with the Giver. During his sessions, he grows accustomed to the new and real feelings he acquires, feeling joy, affection, loss, loneliness, and love and more. Despite how good some of those ...
... middle of paper ...
...ngs that make it seem like one, there is no such thing as a utopia. The community in The Giver proves that.
As you can see, this society that Jonas lives in is not as perfect as you may have thought it was. All of us, Jonas included, looked over the bad parts and immediately worshipped the good, leading our minds to conclude that there is nothing wrong with the way they live. But, as you have read, there are some major problems that this society has amassed. They do not accurately gasp the concept of feelings; everything is…invariable, thanks to Sameness; and that the people possess qualities or practices that are inhuman. I must add that I believe that the people who first introduced this way of living were psychological and probably did not think it through. However, if there were such things as utopias, what do you think it would be like?
Jonas, the protagonist, is assigned the job of holding memories for the community. This is so that not everyone has to experience sad or painful memories. The Giver's job is to transmit these memories to Jonas and, in doing so, reveals the wonders of love, and family, and pain, and sorrow to this young boy. Jonas begins to resent the rules of sameness and wants to share these joys with his community. After receiving his first memory, Jonas says, "I wish we had those things, still." (p. 84)
The book “The Giver” by Lois Lowry perceives a utopian society, which eliminates all forms of conflict. What was intended to be a utopia became a dystopia, Individuals are living in a shadowed society, where nothing is as it seems. People are accustomed to having pain taken away from them their entire lives. This becomes a dystopia because they will never know what pain is.
“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.
“Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given.” said David Levithan. In her dystopian novel, The Giver, Lois Lowry is able to convey the same idea as this quote. In this book, people created the Community in which the members are in a supposedly safe and happy environment. The Elders choose Jonas, the main character, to be the next Receiver of Memory and his training helps him to experience the past and see the deep flaws in the Community.
Jonas decides to leave and change the lives of his people so that they can experience the truth. “The Giver rubbed Jonas’s hunched shoulders… We’ll make a plan” (155). Their plan involves leaving sameness and heading to Elsewhere, where Jonas knows the memories can be released to the people. He has a connection with Gabe, a special child who has experienced the memories, unlike the rest of the community. Jonas has a strong love for Gabe, and he longs to give him a better life. “We’re almost there, Gabriel” (178). Even with a sprained ankle, Jonas keeps pushing forward because he wants everyone to experience what The Giver has given him. He wants them to have a life where the truth is exposed. His determination allows him to make a change for a greater future in his community. This proves that Jonas has the strength to change his community for the
how a utopia would not be good: The Receiver feels the pain of knowing there is more to life than life in the utopia, the community has no variety, and the Chief Elders take away all aspects of freedom humans have. For today’s society, living in a utopian society may not be far away. We today could undergo a terrible disaster and feel the need to live in a utopia. However to live in a utopia is to live like “ants,” and humans were not meant to be
To me a utopia is a place where everyone is content, where there is no hate or discrimination. That is the givers society, that's why I'm saying in the book the Giver by Lois Lowry is a utopia. The three reasons I believe that it is a utopia is, there society works they, they have no bad things going on and Joan's life got complicated when he received the memories.
In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Jonas and his community live in a world without memories. As no one has anything from the past to compare their current lives to, there is also no concept of real pain or pleasure. Both pain and pleasure are important aspects of life and the human experience, giving each person a different perspective based upon their experiences, creating differences that the community of The Giver strives to get rid of. In order to protect sameness and equality in every aspect of life throughout the population, no one can be allowed memories except for the one chosen member, the Receiver of Memories.
The Giver [120] tells Jonas, “ Our people made a choice, the choice to go to sameness.” Having pain and sadness in our life is a big warning system and helps protect you but the Community throws it away like it’s nothing [137] Jonas was given a memory of sledding down a hill and breaking a bone and so he knew it was bad because it gave him warning. Pain is a great human quality and it was meant to be there right with us throughout our lives. If they don’t want pain then they don’t want happiness either. I love knowing that I have feelings like that because we know it keeps us
Have you ever wondered why the world we live in isn’t a Utopia? The community in the Giver was destined to fail because of the lack of truth toward the citizens. Some evidence for this statement comes from the short story Harrison Bergeron, where characters like him find flaws in their community. Another story to back up the statement is from Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, evidence from here shows that people think of differences as a bad thing. The last article that provided evidence was a article on Genetic Engineering, this shows that there are always a con to a pro.
In Lois Lowry's The Giver, the protagonist, Jonas, along with the Giver, go on a journey to discover the true meaning of memories and what has the town forgotten. Jonas is a twelve-year-old boy, who lives in a society that lacks pain and suffering. In Jonas's kinship, everybody uncomfortably nice and polite to everyone. They live without prejudice, starvation, hatred, and pain. Yet with this, they took choice with them, and The Giver would later say, in chapter 12, page ninety-five, “We gained control of a lot of things, but we had to let go of others.” In the community, the Elders picked the jobs and future careers for the twelve-year-olds. Jonas lives with his father and mother, who work in different jobs, the father as a Nurturer, and the mother working in the Justice Department. He also lives with his sister, Lily, who is nine.
Utopia means a place of perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions. That definition does not match the society in The Giver. The punishment for breaking minor rules is too much for how little the rule is. Certain people get punished for breaking the rules which is unfair. If it was a utopia everything would be the same. They hide the past of your life. The most unbelievable thing is that they kill babies that aren't good enough for them. Shocking, right? Ponder this;, if you lived in a utopian society, do you think would it be like
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.”
Utopias are first not possible to exist because of all of the people who break rules..For example, The giver is a Utopian community but they have seemed to fail that because on page 14 paragraph 5 Jonas states, “They were not allowed to ride bicycles before then. But almost always, the older brothers and sisters had secretly taught the younger ones.” This shows that they break the rules of their utopian community so the aren't one because they are not all the same people. This quote is just telling us that kids break the rules and this means