Lois Lowry's Use of Allusion Throughout The Giver

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The author Lois Lowry grew up all around the world when she was a child due to her dad being in the U.S. Army. Since father was a dentist in the army and traveled the world she had gone to many countries which inspired her writing. At one point she had lived in Tokyo where she went to an American school on the base during her junior high years. One of her literary works later in her life is, The Giver, which had won a Newbery Award. In The Giver, the setting is a utopian society where the characters have no feelings, no memories, and no choices that they are able to make on their own. The names of the characters also have hidden meanings and relations behind them using allusion to recreate a religous matter along with how the novel percives morals. Lowry uses the literary elements allusion and setting to express the theme that memories and choice are worth the pain they might sometimes bring.

“...Jonas becomes the Reciever of Memories shared by only one other…” (Lowry,4). The author uses allusion throught the entire book almost through evryone and everything. The young boy that Jonas’s family was looking over was named Gabriel. In a biblical view his name is one of god’s messengers and in the end of the giver when Jonas takes Gabe with him to find another community unlike theirs they find it together. In a hebrew relation Jonas is another version of Jonah which is the son of truth were in his community he does not like how his father lied and said that the twin was going to released when he had killed the child. He also wants the community to know the truth of the past and not hide things. The Giver is the book is portrayed as God since he is the presnter to all life. Elsewhere is heaven in the novel when the elderly and the yo...

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...es that could have even been many years earlier. WIthout memory, how can these people learn from the mistakes if they do not know anything. So without memories and choices you may avoid pain but you will never know who you actually are.

Works Cited

“Another Look At: Lois Lowry’s Giver Quartet.” Booklist 108.19/20 (2012): 91.Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Jan. 2014.

Davis, Anne. “Connection- the Giver and God.” ITC Blogs. N.p., 5 Dec. 2003. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. .

Hanson, Carter F. “The Utopian function of memory in Lois Lowry’s The Giver.” Extrapolation 50.1 (2009): 45+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Jan. 2014

Lowry, Lois. “The Giver.” Amazon. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Jan. 2014.

“Utopian.” Th Free Dictionary. Farlex, 2014. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. .

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