More handpicked essays just for you.
Comparison between the giver and our society
Contrast and comparison about the giver by lois lowry
The giver book, brief synopsis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Lois Lowry describes in her novel The Giver, a community practically perfect: organized, ruled, and outlined. The whole community is governed by a group of elders called “The committee”, who had make the rules that conduct the society’s lifestyle and behavior, in order to maintain everything in equilibrium and unbiased. The committee also conducts the Decisions like the assignment or profession, or the release of some members of the community. Jonas, who is the main character in the story describes the way that he looks the world where he is living and how this world changes in a dramatically way when he starts to receive knowledge through the Giver in his training to become the Receiver of memory. Jonas discovered what happened when an alien …show more content…
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 …show more content…
Seems to be something that is not hurtful and that is also normal. However, if there is no shame on that practice and even no pain on that, people preferred to hide what release was. In chapter number four, Jonas asked to Larissa, in the center of Old people, what a release was and she said “I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does, except the committee.” Page 41, Lowry. The committee and the Giver were the only people who knew about release, for the other people in the community it was just as a common activity in their daily duties. Even the Giver told Jonas that people didn’t understand, they didn’t know everything. For instance they could not survive with those feelings and emotions and the Giver was the one who had to take all of those emotions by his
Jonas's father did not understand the value of life really was. The Community makes sure that their residents do not know the true meaning of release. Just because they ignore the fact that several murders happen frequently, does not mean that the reality behind it disappears with it. Ignoring this, does not make the residents of the Community live a blissful life. In the beginning of the novel, when the Jonas talks about what release means, he says, “… to be released… a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure,”(Lowry 20).
Throughout his training, the Giver gifts Jonas with many good memories to offset some of the horrific memories. The memory of war in particular is too traumatizing for Jonas to handle, no matter how many good memories the Giver can entrust to him. For example, the passage describes, “From the distance. Jonas could hear the thud if cannons. Overwhelmed by pain, he lay there in the fearsome stench for hours, listened to men and animals die, and learned what warfare meant.
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 gets freedom, the community is left without someone to take the memories from The Giver. This is an example of conformity because a few of the Receivers before Jonas had left the community due to the things they were learning and finding out about the community, which changed the way they viewed the society. They then realized that they do not want to do this for the rest of their life, and for their job to sit around and hold memories as no one else is capable of knowing them is not something they want to do. To conclude, Jonas’s action to run away from the society follows in the footsteps of the others, and if others follow Jonas, there may never be a Receiver for the Jonas’s
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.
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...
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.
The Language of Utopia is very different from the modern English language. The community in the novel ‘The Giver’ includes words with different meaning then as they are defined today. Words like assignment, release, and ceremony have taken on a whole new meaning throughout the book. Aging throughout the book comes all at once, the eights turn to nines, and the elevens turn to twelves. With the ceremonies there are rewards, such as receiving an assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, or receiving a bicycle at nine. There are other ceremonies as well, such as the Ceremony of Loss, and the Ceremony of Release.
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.”
Jonas hates how his society decides to keep memories a secret from everyone. Jonas says: “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared” (Lowry 154). Jonas feels that memories, whether it be good or bad, should be shared with everyone. Furthermore, memories allow the community to gain wisdom from remembering experiences of the past. As for The Giver, The Giver disagrees with how the community runs things. He believes that memories should be experienced by everyone as well, because life is meaningless without memories. The Giver says: “There are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don’t want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable–so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen [...] It’s just that… without memories, it’s all meaningless. They gave that burden to me” (Lowry 103). The Giver is burdened with the responsibility to not share memories even though that is what he feels the community deserves. In addition, he believes the community lives a very monotonous life where nothing ever changes. Everything is meaningless without memories because the community does not know what it is like to be human without feelings. Overall, Jonas and The Giver’s outlooks on their “utopian” society change as they realize that without
Although Jonas is obedient at the beginning of the book, towards the end and middle of the book, he becomes rebellious. As he learns about the memories of how things used to be, he changes his behavior. He wants to be able to feel love and he wants other people in the community to feel love, hope, and happiness like what he had felt in the memories given to him from The Giver .. “The next morning for the first time Jonas had not taken his pill” pg. 129.
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.
It’s not easy to be brave when you are scared. Leaving the only home you have ever known is not a simple task. The science-fiction novel, The Giver written by Lois Lowry, was a story about courage and being different. Jonas, a Twelve, decided to escape his community to Elsewhere hoping to open new doors and find more opportunities. He was influenced by several people and events to leave the only home he had ever known. Jonas left the community because his experiences changed the way he saw the world. Making the decision to go to Elsewhere was not simple, but thankfully there are people who gave the decision a little push to make the dream a reality.
A Perfect Community Have you ever thought of living in a perfect world. A utopian society is a community that has nearly perfect qualities. A utopian society is hard or even impossible to create, you would need to have everyone be the same and everything would have to be perfect. Many people believe that a utopia is a livable and better environment than a unperfect world, other people will disagree and they prefer the world lived in today.
Finally, the courage in Jonas’s character is shown when he receives the assignment to be the new Receiver of Memories. I think that the fact that he was even able to accept that he was the new Receiver was courageous. I say this because he was warned of the great pain that he’d have to go through during his training, and he still accepted it. Although he had only felt little pain at that point in his life, he still knew what pain felt like. He was told when he received his job that he would feel that pain, but far worse than when he, for example, smashed his finger in a door. Sure, that hurts, but the pain that was explained to him was far worse.
Jonas always tells his dreams. He always was there for chastisement. He always shared his feelings at the evening meal. He also always took his pill every morning. “Now he swallowed the pill his mother handed him.”(Page 38). By the end of the book Jonas is rebellious. He stops taking pills for emotions that he is supposed to take everyday. Jonas stays at the Giver’s house when he sees his father kill a baby. Jonas also tries to escape from the community when Giver creates a plan to escape from the community which Jonas barely follows because of Gabe’s release. “But your role now is to escape.” (Page 162). This means that Jonas has to escape and the Giver must stay to help the community after he is gone.