The Giver

864 Words2 Pages

Imagine living in a society with no pain and no loss. Imagine feeling completely safe but having no love or happiness. In The Giver written by Lois Lowry, the characters all believe they live in an utopian society and there is no better place or way to live. The main character, Jonas, believes that there must be another way to live with love and happiness. On the day of turning twelve, Jonas is assigned the job of Receiver of Memory. Through his journey, he learns memories of the past and how it used to be with love and joy but also pain and suffering.

At the beginning of The Giver, Jonas is apprehensive, but as he gains more memories he becomes brave. Jonas starts out as an everyday citizen of the community. He feels very worried …show more content…

In the beginning, Jonas is obedient, but towards the end of the book, he starts to become rebellious. Jonas is like every other citizen in the community. He obeys all the rules and policies in the community. When he is told daily to share his dreams with his family, he does. Jonas goes straight to the Annex room after school just as he is instructed. “‘Tell us.’ ‘The details aren't clear really,’ Jonas explained trying to recreate the odd dream in his mind… ‘I was trying to convince her that she should get into the tub of water.’” 35 & 36. Jonas is sharing his dream with his family. He does not want to share his dream with his family, but he obediently shares them anyway. 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. Jonas stops taking his stirring pills so he can have feelings of love. Jonas transfers happy memories to Gabe so other people besides himself and the Giver can feel the happiness. He tries to give Asher memories by putting his hands on Ashers

Show More
Related

  • The Giver, by Lois Lowry, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, and Logan's Run, by William F. Nolan

    748 Words  | 2 Pages

    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)

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Overcoming Adversity In The Giver, By Lois Lowry

    709 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Essay On Conformity In The Giver

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Giver Should Not Be Censored

    1121 Words  | 3 Pages

    I liked the feeling of love... I wish we still had that... Of course...I can see that it was a dangerous way to live'" (126). Jonas greatly enjoys the emotions that accompany life Elsewhere, although he recognizes their inherent risks. Using the knowledge he has accumulated from the Giver's memories, Jonas wisely concludes that the hurt and pain are worthwhile because of the good that also emerges when life is lived

    Read More

  • the giver

    1032 Words  | 3 Pages

    I can assure you that reading this book will make you take valuable lessons with you. Jonas is a really wise, curious and a positive 12 year old boy. I think we should learn to be like him more because in the story Jonas shows how he follows what he thinks is right and not what the society thinks. This helps portray the importance of individuality.

    Read More

  • The Giver: Analysis of Jonas

    501 Words  | 2 Pages

    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. Jonas is also very determined, committing to a task fully when he believes in it and willing to risk his own life for the sake of the people he loves.

    Read More

  • The Perception of Jonas in Lois Lowry's The Giver

    1252 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jonas is the protagonist in The Giver. He changes from being a typical twelve-year-old boy to being a boy with the knowledge and wisdom of generations past. He has emotions that he has no idea how to handle. At first he wants to share his changes with his family by transmitting memories to them, but he soon realizes this will not work. After he feels pain and love, Jonas decides that the whole community needs to understand these memories. Therefore Jonas leaves the community and his memories behind for them to deal with. He hopes to change the society so that they may feel love and happiness, and also see color. Jonas knows that memories are hard to deal with but without memories there is no pain and with no pain, there is no true happiness.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On The Giver

    543 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Giver is actually one of my all-time favorite books, so I’ve looked into why she left the book so inconclusive in the past. The Giver is basically about a boy named Jonas who lives in a perfect society. He lives in a household with his two parents and his little sister Lilly. When he becomes a 12, he goes through a huge ceremony and all the elders assign them their jobs. In this community, there is no lying, stealing, racism, pain, sunlight or color. Jonas was chosen to be The Receiver, and he didn’t know what to do because this job was such a big deal. Jonas then goes through training with the current Receiver, who is now The Giver. Training consists of The Giver passing down the memories from when the community was not what it is today. Memories that are passed down are things that are normal to us. Memories of sun, snow, pain, and sorrow.

    Read More

  • The Giver

    383 Words  | 1 Pages

    opportunity to make a new beginning. In the book, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, Jonas is making a

    Read More

  • The Giver, by Lois Lowry: Decisions and Personal Empowerment

    986 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Similarities And Differences Between The Giver Movie And Movie

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Giver is about a boy named Jonas who was chosen to be the community’s next Receiver of Memory. He lived in a community where everything was chosen for the citizens, and everything was perfect. During Jonas' training, he realized that the community was missing something and that there was more in the world. Jonas wanted everybody to know that. The Giver book was then made into a movie.

    Read More

  • Jonas In 'The Giver'

    803 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book, The Giver, Jonas is portrayed as a kind, curious and rebellious individual with a keen sense of awareness. The beginning chapters revealed Jonas as a very naive and compliant person, similar to everyone else in his community. Instances, when he was a child and got reprimanded for small misunderstandings, made him like this. However, throughout the book, Jonas has grown into an independent and determined person, someone who wants to make a change. Jonas finds new strengths in his character which forms him into someone spectacular and distinctive.

    Read More

  • Reflection Of The Movie The Giver: Movie Review

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    Movie The Giver, directed by Phillip Noyce, is based on Lois Lowry’s book and tells the story how the perfect world would look like. Where everyone is happy, safe, and there is no pain. Jonas is the main character and I will be analyzing how his values and beliefs changes though the movie. This movie is interesting because everyone lives within boundaries where past memory does exist just for the chosen ones. Jonas is one of those people who learns past wisdom and suffers while trying to understand what is the right thing to do.

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Giver Book by Lois Lowry

    1492 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Giver starts off as the ordinary story of an eleven-year-old boy named Jonas. When we meet the protagonist, he is apprehensive about the Ceremony of Twelve, at which he will be assigned his job. Although he has no clue as to what job he might be assigned, he is astonished when he is selected to be the Receiver of Memory. He learns that it is a job of the highest honor, one that requires him to bear physical pain of a magnitude beyond anyone’s experience.

    Read More

  • The Giver Book Report

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about The Giver

Open Document