Compare And Contrast Anthem And The Giver

The Giver versus Anthem

Dystopian and utopian novels are books often loved because of their alternate realities. Lois Lowry and Ayn Rand are both award-winning authors that have written them, along with many other successful books to their names. The Giver and Anthem are both books that have given them notoriety, them showing societies different than most. The Giver and Anthem are books to be compare by structure, main characters, and themes.

Involving the book’s structure, simply the premise drives these books apart with The Giver initially displayed as a utopia, while Anthem is shown as a dystopia. This is because the people in The Giver lack intense emotions like love, depression, and anger and accept society’s rule, and the people in Anthem live in fear and obey due to

fear in punishment. Both societies are controlled by the eldest, who enforce strict rules. The citizens in each book are categorized in some way. In The Giver, the categorization is done with the youth by age until the children turn twelve. In Anthem, people are categorized throughout their whole lives by gender, and at the age of fifteen, also occupation. In both books, the citizens are assigned jobs and have unexplored areas where the main characters eventually escape to freedom.
Going deeper in the book structure, the main characters are ideas are to contrast as well.

Jonas and Equality are outcast in the society because they think differently than the others in their societies. Physically, they differ with Jonas having rare pale eyes, and Equality being stronger, taller, and handsome than his “brothers”. Both characters leave when their societies’ main deprivation hits them in a way that makes them have no choice but to leave. Jonas experiences this when the Giver sends him a memory of his father, a pediatrician given a lethal injection to a twin due to identical twins not being allowed. Jonas experiences an overload of emotion, something the people in the community rarely experience, and leaves. In Anthem, Equality leaves the society when his sole joy, a lightbulb of his creation, is rejected by a council of people he once wanted to be a part of because anything done individually is a sin. The characters are driven by the sheer wrongness of their communities to leave, along with people they care for dearly. Jonas took Gabriel, a baby who was to be killed the next morning, and Liberty, a girl in Anthem, follows Equality in the Uncharted Forest, leaving the rest

behind.
The authors, Lois Lowry and Ayn Rand, both exhibited similar meanings in their books. Lois Lowry described a tale of how conformity ruins a nation. The moral of her story being to always question aspects of life to make it greater instead of just following rules. It also shows how conformity travels in generations to where people overtime don’t question why they have to do such things as kill one twin or elderly because it’s what they are used to. The citizens going through the same motions throughout their lives without emotion makes everyone the same static characters. Individually is gone, the same aspect occurring in Anthem. The people of Anthem don’t even have the pronoun “I” to refer to themselves, but “we” to make everyone a part of everyone. They don’t work for themselves, but the community, making everyone be the same. Unlike the Giver, the rules are more enforced, making people live in fear of punishment and have the same dullness about them that has given up on hope of change.
The Giver and Anthem both show how individuality is the basis of a good society and should be encouraged rather than denied. They are beloved books because this thought-provoking message and well-written tales. Lois Lowry and Ayn Rand, both from different times, writing about similar meanings shows an importance to the ideal of difference. The way the book is written, along with the main characters and meanings are things to reflect on when reading these amazing books.