“The Giver” Scholarly Essay

What would you do if you could get wisdom from the touch of a hand? In a future society where good intentions have gone wrong, it will take one exceptional boy to undo generations of neglect. In a world without feelings, a young man’s encounter with emotion shows him a better way to build society. In a world without color or music, generations of people have grown up not realizing what they are living without. We will examine the three traits that make Jonas the wonderful person that he is. We will talk about his courage, integrity and intelligence. We will show how he uses the wisdom acquired from the Giver to set a course that will alter his society forever. The wisdom acquired from a lifetime of memories can only be used by one exceptional boy: Jonas.

Courage, according to the dictionary, is the ability to do something that you know is difficult. In this scene, Jonas has learned about Rosemary. She was a receiver who had trained for five weeks. She was like Jonas and wanted to experience everything including pain and loss. “She left here that day, left this room, and did not go back to her dwelling. I was notified by the speaker that she had gone directly to the Chief Elder and asked to be released” (143). The memories were too much for Rosemary to carry. Jonas, on the other hand, even though he was feeling the pain he kept returning every day for more memories. Jonas experiences the death of a boy in the war during a memory. “Jonas did not want to go back. He didn’t want the memories, didn’t want the honor, didn’t want the wisdom, didn’t want the pain. But the choice was not his. He returned each day to the Annex room” (121). The author showed that Jonas had the courage to do what he felt was his job. He continued on where ...

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...of clean water, and worsening weather patterns. These are problems with no easy solution. Much as Jonas faced problems with no easy solution, we now have to bring our courage, integrity, and collective wisdom to bear on these problems.

In this essay we have seen how one courageous boy was able to use his integrity, intelligence, and wisdom to make a difference in a world spun out of control. Lois Lowry has shown us how good intentions, such as the desire for all members of society to be equal, can lead to a place that no human should have to live. We now live in just such a world. The foolish actions of our ancestors have left us with a world that is rapidly becoming unlivable. Just as Jonas had to fix the problems in his society left to him by previous generations, so too will our generation be left to figure out solutions to problems left to us by our ancestors.