A Conformist Community on The Giver

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Dream of a world that has only one culture. Since there is only one culture, nothing is different. This would be a splendid way to live life. There would be no issues between people of different cultures. Everyone has their own point of view for things, so it is natural that one race’s views might clash with another’s. All cultures have their own special rituals that might interrupt or annoy people of another culture. For example, an Indian person might wake up early in the morning and play loud spiritual music to pray to his or her gods. This would bother the neighbors of different races that might wake up late. After looking closely at groups of people in many places, people will notice that everyone in that group is of the same race. Since everyone shares the same point of view or culture, they tend to get along comfortably with each other. Why have so many cultures when people only want to get along with people of the same culture? Relinquishing cultures and individuality is worth having limited issues. After exploring the idea of Sameness in The Giver, Lois Lowry shows that even though there are problems with living in such a unique community, it ultimately benefits because there are fewer problems and awful feelings.

Even though the community does benefit from Sameness, there are some things it is deprived of. While color is not absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of a society, it is still something important that this community lacks. “The red was so beautiful” (Lowry 95). This quote shows that once Jonas is exposed to color, he realizes how beautiful and important they are. Whenever he sees rare flashes of red, he gets excited and likes it. After being able to experience color, he looks at th...

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...hanging to have fewer problems, competitions, and bad feelings. Sadly, there are no colors to beautify things and no freedom to make choices; however, the benefits overpower the negatives. Mistakes are not possible because Sameness does not give choices for people to mess up. The people of the community can all be considered one culture. No color creates very few characteristic related problems. Sameness controls Mother Nature and helps feed the community by stopping competitions, so they are able to survive and prosper without many issues. The whole community does not feel real pain because they have no access to mournful memories. It is a good thing that the community is in Sameness, and Sameness is the community. Even though the people of the community are deprived of many joyful things, they might not be surviving if they did not benefit from Sameness.

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