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The giver thematic essay
The giver literary analysis
The giver book summary and analysis
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Imagine a world where Sameness has a part in everything. Where everyone sees the same colors, knows all the same things, and more. In The Giver by Lois Lowry, the main character, Jonas, has to live in a world like this. As Jonas lives in his community where he grows by taking risks, he gains knowledge through memories and obtains intense emotions. In Jonas’ world, if you aren’t like everyone else, you are considered distinctive. During the story, Jonas starts to question his society about this situation. And he takes risks to find out the truth. For example, Jonas notices a change while a throwing an apple, “But he had taken the apple home, against the recreation area rules”(Lowry 31). Here, Jonas takes his first step towards making a change …show more content…
When Jonas receives memories from The Giver, such as a memory of war, he can see how the rules have made a big impact on his life. In fact, when Jonas’ groupmates are playing a war related game, Jonas interrupts the game and pleads, “ ‘Don’t play it anymore’ ”(Lowry 168). Jonas is having flashback of the war memory he was given and remembering the pain he went through receiving it. If Jonas’ society enforces Sameness, then no one disagrees; therefore, there won’t be war and pain in the community. Because of the knowledge that Jonas and The Giver hold from the memories of the past, it comes into play a lot during the novel. For instance, when The Giver is explaining the importances of his and Jonas’ assignment of handling the memories, The Giver explains to Jonas that, “ ‘when I am called by the Committee of Elders, I appear before them, to give them counsel and advice’ ”(Lowry 130). Since The Giver and Jonas are the only people who have the memories, when the Committee of Elders, the head of the community, needs advice about something they go to them since they don’t have the knowledge of the past to fix a certain
The essential thing to overcoming adversity is the ability to cause change in yourself and others. In the book, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, Jonas is singled out after he isn’t chosen during the Ceremony of Twelve. He has to learn to overcome the pain of being The Receiver of Memory. He also has to face the truth and discover who his real allies are. This helps him to become a changemaker because he grows. He grows by using the pain to become stronger mentally and physically. Ultimately, Lowry teaches us that to make a change, you must display curiosity and determination.
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
On the surface, Jonas is like any other eleven-year-old boy living in his community. He seems more intelligent and perceptive than many of his peers, and he thinks more seriously than they do about life, worrying about his own future as well as his friend Asher’s. He enjoys learning and experiencing new things: he chooses to volunteer at a variety of different centers rather than focusing on one, because he enjoys the freedom of choice that volunteer hours provide. He also enjoys learning about and connecting with other people, and he craves more warmth and human contact than his society permits or encourages. The things that really set him apart from his peers—his unusual eyes, his ability to see things change in a way that he cannot explain—trouble him, but he does not let them bother him too much, since the community’s emphasis on politeness makes it easy for Jonas to conceal or ignore these little differences. Like any child in the community, Jonas is uncomfortable with the attention he receives when he is singled out as the new Receiver, preferring to blend in with his friends.
Even as a child Jonas was unusually perceptive, this is characterized through his pale eyes which appear deeper than the other children’s dark eyes. While he gets along well with his peers he still feels different. Jonas has a heightened sense of people and who they are, the reasoning for things, and curiosity of new things. He particularly enjoys the freedom to make his own choices as to where he will serve his volunteer hours. Jonas never volunteered at one place more than another, which made it hard for him to predict what job he will be assigned. He liked being able to experience all sorts of positions in the community. Jonas is set apart in many ways, one is particular is his ability to see beyond. The closer the ceremony of twelve gets, the more often he see sees flashes of items changing for a second, flashes of the beyond (Lowry 94).
In a utopia where the inhabitants thrive on the simple idea of sameness, the truth of the unspoken of past, was entrusted in the unexpecting young mind of a boy named Jonas. The Giver, by Lois Lowry, created an entire community which carries out each day full of bliss while completely ignorant about what they are lacking. When Jonas was selected to carry out the heavy and draining job of receiving the memories of things such as colors, feelings, and music, he was finally able to comprehend that a utopia without these, is not a utopia at all.
In the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry one sees how there is basically no freedom in the community. The government regulates one's life long career at the age of twelve. Everything is straightforward and is the same for everyone. If there are any imperfections one is released. Overall, there is almost no freedom in this society and there are very strict rules.
No one truly comprehends what he experiences, but they understand that he obtains wisdom from the memories he holds. As Jonas learns from the memories, he asks the Giver. “Why do you and I have to hold these memories?” to which the Giver responds, “It gives us wisdom.” (139-40). The Giver emphasizes that he does not hold power in the community, but wisdom. By understanding the past actions and emotions of humankind through war, famine, disease, and pain, he can prevent them from occurring again. He is a staple in the community and an adviser to the council due to his abilities to make decisions based on the mistakes and repercussions of the past. Memories are what allow people to create context for future actions and provide insight to possible outcomes of those actions, which is why the community turns to the Giver for advice. Jonas remembers an event in the community where a pilot flew a plane over the city instead of away from it. The city council panicked under the circumstances and asked for advice from the Giver: “I used my wisdom, from the memories. I knew that there had been times in the past—terrible times—when people had destroying others in haste, in fear, and had brought about their own destruction” (141). No one else is able to have the same understanding and wisdom as the Giver, and later, Jonas, and no one really seems to notice any lacking in their life at the same
The Giver is set in a community where there is sameness which is everything being the same, and the community also didn’t have feelings or colors. Every kid in the community is selected for a job and this year a kid named Jonas, who is the main character in the book is given a very special job, that doesn’t happen very often. In this community the people don’t have memories and so Jonas is the Receiver of Memory and he receives memories from the Giver who gives memories. Jonas’ feelings have been changing a lot in The Giver. Jonas’ feelings first start out apprehensive, then humiliation and terror, then surprised, then scared, and lastly he felt sad.
Jonas had become the New Receiver. 20 years ago he was running away trying to let his community have all the wonderful and infamous memories, that he and the Giver only held. But Jonas at the last minute changed his mind, he thought of the anguish and pain they would receive. So he decided to make his way back and somehow he survived and was immediately taken to the area, where they do release. But during the Committee of Elders state Jonas’ wrongdoings and traitorous actions. It is abruptly stop, by everyone turning their head facing, The Giver.
You know everything about the past and the present from your life, but the citizens of Jonas’ community don’t. Everything is hidden from them, except for Jonas and The Giver, who have all
What is your idea of a utopian society? In “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, there is a community where everything is revolved around sameness. There are no emotions or colors and everyone is told what they are going to do in their life. Although our current society bears some similarities like the way families are run and the way others are treated there are numerous differences such as our feelings and emotions.
The sincere awareness of colors is not only forgotten, but dismissed into mere memories, and consigned into oblivion. Jonas, after gaining the awareness of colors, comes to the conclusion of wanting the choices that he could make in his daily routine. “I want to decide things! A blue tunic, or a red one?” (97). After The Giver asks Jonas why it is not fair that nothing has color, Jonas realizes that, for him, color is not just an nature. It also represents a level of individual freedom and choice that he has never known in his rigidly controlled society. This forces Jonas to face the disadvantages of living in such a community where self-expression is stifled. Jonas is talking about the sameness in the community and how he has to wear the same, old gray tunic. The Giver points out that choice is at the heart of the matter; when you can’t choose, it makes life very dull. “It’s the choosing that’s important” (98). Because the world in which Jonas has grown up has no color, the appearance of color in the story is important and meaningful. Color represents Jonas’s want for more individual expression. Colors brighten in a special way and Jonas, coming fro...
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
It allows us to not only read what we want, but also believe and be as unique as we want. However, in the world that Lois Lowry has built for her audience in The Giver, there is anything but diversity, as “the society has elected to move toward sameness, climinating choices, pain, warfare, and starvation” (Hurst 75). This community is built solely on sameness: the idea that everyone should dress the same as everyone else in either their age group or in their profession, eat the same things, and do the same routine as everyone else. One example of sameness within the novel is that of the children’s clothing; everyone in the same year dresses exactly alike. For instance, “fours, fives, and sixes all wore jackets that fastened in the back” (Lowry 40), and sevens get front-buttoned jackets. Besides the few different careers that everyone is assigned, this is one of the few forms of same, but diverse. Another consistency in the community is the color of flesh. The Giver explains to Jonas that “flesh was many different colors. That was before we went to sameness” (Lowery 94).The Giver references sameness several other times throughout the novel, including when the people decided to make the “choice, the choice to go to Sameness…we relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences…” (Lowry 95). The idea of sameness is consistently brought to the fore front for the reader to question. If
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.