The Giver by Lois Lowry

Personality: the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character. The Giver, a dystopian novel by Lois Lowry, introduces Jonas, the main character in a society masked by perfection. In reality, it is anything but perfect; feelings are not real, the true meaning of words are masked, differences are unappreciated, history is forgotten-except for one person, the Receiver of Memory. When Jonas is selected to be the next Receiver of Memory, he realizes that his community is not at all what he thought it to be. Through the memories, Jonas finds out what his community is hiding and what feelings really are. Throughout this novel, Jonas’s curiosity leads to troubling discoveries. However, he overcomes obstacles, one of them being his own curiosity, by using wisdom and bravery.
One of Jonas’s character traits is curiosity, which at times useful and at times a bother. An example of curiosity from the text is one of Jonas’s flashbacks, when an airplane had flown over his community, Jonas thinks “At first, he had been only fascinated. He had never seen an aircraft so close, for it was against the rules for Pilots to fly over the community” (1). This shows that Jonas is curious because he wants to know about the aircraft and what it’s purpose was. An additional example of Jonas’s curiosity is when he receives the first memory from the Giver, a foreign memory of sleds and hills. Jonas asks, “‘Why don’t we have snow, and sleds, and hills?’” (83). This proves Jonas’s curiosity because he wants to know; he likes knowing things. Through the painful discoveries from his own curiosity, Jonas uses his most oblivious yet necessary character trait: bravery.
Using bravery, Jonas overcomes the biggest obstacle ...

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... bravery to push through. His curiosity gets in the way sometimes, but he learns because of his curiosity many things. When he first begins to receive memories, his thoughts and decisions regarding them are immature. But after The Giver provokes further thought from Jonas, he (Jonas) realizes that choices, and decisions, are not all simple things like choosing colors. They are also complex things, like choosing whether it’s right or wrong to have a bigger population. The memories give Jonas the extra boost for him to figure out what bravery is, and once he finds it, he uses it as his weapon to fight the pain from the memories. In conclusion, Jonas’s strong morals and characteristics help him change his outlook on life from the dull, alien point of view that he thought was normal to the uncorrput society that is now the present.

Works Cited

The Giver by Lois Lowry