Dystopia In The Giver, By Lowis Lowry

736 Words2 Pages

Think about a community where you can’t marry someone of your choice, you can’t choose your own job, and you can’t have your own kids. This sounds like a unbearable place to live, but there is one like this and it’s in the book The Giver by Lowis Lowry. This type of community would be considered a dystopia, even though some of the citizens think it is a utopia because they don’t need to worry about a lot of regular-to us - things in their lives. The people of the controlled community in The Giver get harsh punishments for small errors, the citizens don’t get to experience any emotions, and they kill or release innocent newchildren.

The Giver is a dystopia is that the citizens get harsh punishments for even the smallest errors. This is …show more content…

The Giver let Jonas experience love at Christmas, in a memory but that was the only time Jonas ever got to enjoy the feeling. The citizens don’t even understand what the emotions are, because they just feel normal-not happy, excited, anger, or love. Jonas had just been given the memory of love from The Giver and decided to ask his dad about it. “‘Do you love me?’ There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. ‘Jonas. You of all people. Precision of language, please!’” (127). Jonas’s dad got almost angry with Jonas because love isn’t supposed to be something that is in their community. Having emotions isn’t normal in The Giver. Love isn’t a natural thing someone has so his dad didn’t really understand what Jonas was talking …show more content…

The citizens also don’t have to worry about experiencing pain because they have all the medicines to cure all the way from a stomach ache to a broken bone. The weaknesses of the community outweigh the advantages, though. Along with many other reasons, the people of the community don’t get to choose their own jobs, spouses, or have their own kids-they are assigned kids. No one gets to have true emotions, either.

In this community of The Giver, the advantages get outweighed by the disadvantages. The citizens get harsh punishments for the smallest issues, no one in the community (except Jonas after a while and The Giver) gets to experience real emotions that are actually what they feel-not what they think they feel, and they kill/release innocent newchildren that don’t weigh enough or aren’t maturing fast enough. When you weigh the pros and cons of being in the community, you can see that people would be much better off living out of it, rather than being a part of the

Show More
Related

  • The Giver and The Hunger Games: Novels that Exemplify a Totalitarian System

    715 Words  | 2 Pages

    Right from the beginning it is obvious that in the community in The Giver the...

    Read More

  • The Giver

    623 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first reason why the community in the book The Giver should be given personal rights is because the inhabitants of the community could learn from their mistakes. Without any personal rights they cannot make their own decisions; if they don’t make their own decisions they cannot learn from their mistakes that their decisions had led them to. On page 98 in The Giver Jonas stated that “What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong?” This tells the reader...

    Read More

  • Hope In The Giver

    463 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Giver teaches us that love is essential. For example, the Giver transfers the memory of love to Jonas by showing him Christmas. “‘Warmth...and happiness. And-let me think. Family. That was a celebration of some sort, a holiday. And something else-I can’t quite get the word for it’”, Jonas described, (155). The word he couldn’t think of was love. In the world Jonas lives in, there is no love. After Jonas learns about love, he starts showing it to other people. He loves Gabe so much that when he leaves the community, he takes Gabe with

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Essay On The Giver

    508 Words  | 2 Pages

    Even though both the society in The Giver by Lois Lowry and modern society are both unique in their own ways, our society is a better society to live in. Our society gives us more freedom to choose for our own benefits and

    Read More

  • Ignorance In The Giver By Lois Lowry

    946 Words  | 2 Pages

    After feeling love through his training as the Receiver, he asks his parents about their love for him. The conversation between them says, “ Jonas asks, ‘Do you love me?’... Later, his mom responds, ‘Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete’ ” (Lowry 127). The ignorance that they have grown up knowing, does not allow them to fully be happy by experiencing love.

    Read More

  • The Negative Effects Of General Welfare In Lois Lowry's The Giver

    1668 Words  | 4 Pages

    General welfare is more important for a democratic government to provide than individual needs because general welfare creates equality and provides safety for all citizens and enables people to work as a group. Despite people having more choice and freedom, for those who do not have a protected society, valuing individual needs, would have a negative effect on the people. So, did the society that Jonas lives in, produce more positive or more negative results? In Lois Lowry’s, The Giver, Jonas’s community is a well-organized society with a very structured and safe life.

    Read More

  • Truman and Giver Essay

    552 Words  | 2 Pages

    In these two societies, they both are similar by having a strict government that does not let anyone leave the community but however, in The Giver no body...

    Read More

  • The Giver A Dystopian Analysis

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    What determines a society to be either a utopia or a dystopia? Would it be everyone following the rules? In the book The Giver, by Lois Lowry, a new “Utopian” culture blossoms from the previously failed society. The Giver’s nation starts out with the intention of creating a utopian society; however, the strict limitations turn it into a dystopia where there are receivers, like Jonas, that hold the good and bad memories from the past culture. Jonas will experience great pain and great joy through his job as the Receiver instead of the whole community sharing the burden. The Giver’s world is a dystopia because of the following three reasons: they kill people that disobey the rules, they do not get to pick their own jobs, and, above all, they beat children if they do not use precise language.

    Read More

  • The Giver: An Example Of A Dystopian Society

    376 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Giver was an example of a dystopian society. In this community citizen doesn`t had any freedom. It had a lots of information about why it was dystopian, but today I will talk about few thing. First reason was the natural world was banished and distrusted. Second was information, independent thought, and freedom were restricted. The last was they had fear of the out side world.

    Read More

  • Comparing In Our World and the World of The Giver

    800 Words  | 2 Pages

    The story in The Giver by Lois Lowry takes place in a community that is not normal. People cannot see color, it is an offense for somebody to touch others, and the community assigns people jobs and children. This unnamed community shown through Jonas’ eye, the main character in this novel, is a perfect society. There is no war, crime, and hunger. Most readers might take it for granted that the community in The Giver differs from the real society. However, there are several affinities between the society in present day and that in this fiction: estrangement of elderly people, suffering of surrogate mothers, and wanting of euthanasia.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Conformity In The Giver

    787 Words  | 2 Pages

    society, everyone wears the same clothes, follows the same rules, and has a predetermined life. A community just like that lives inside of Lois Lowry’s The Giver and this lack of individuality shows throughout the whole book. This theme is demonstrated through the control of individual appearance, behavior, and ideas.

    Read More

  • Theme of Utopia in The Giver

    808 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Giver presents a community that appears to be perfect on the surface. Jonas's community is free of warfare, pain, sorrow and other bitterness we suffer in our society. The world seems to be secure and undergoes little conflict. Such a community seems flawless and is the idealistic society that we longed to live in. However , through Jonas's training, the imperfections of the Utopian community are revealed. The community allows little individual freedom and choice. In allowing only one person, the Receiver, to bear the memories of the world, the community frees itself from suffering and conflict. As a result, it gives up the ability to experience true feelings, passion, individual privacy, freedom and knowledge. To maintain the community's order, strict rules are applied to the inhabitants. "Releases" ( a less offensive term for kills) are performed to the citizens who jeopardize the stability and peace of the community. The inhabitants' careers and spouses are chosen by the Elders (or government).

    Read More

  • The Giver, by Lois Lowry: Decisions and Personal Empowerment

    986 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...wined into her writing the answer becomes clear. Society has boundaries and limits that are acknowledged should not be crossed. Yet humans have a craving to do so. Each time the fine line between acceptable and inappropriate is crossed, a new boundary is created; therefore a new crave develops and the cycle never ends. The Giver takes place after the last limit was broken, when the Elders took away some of the most beautiful pleasures of life, and the last line was drawn with all memories of freedom stored away. And this storage happens to be a human mind, the Giver, passing it down to the next Reciever into conceivably the end of time. Jonas disagrees; the memories he has seen, the pain he has endured, the beauty he has experienced must be shared. He wants the whole world to know the full extent and intention of life that God created. The boundary must be crossed.

    Read More

  • Louis Lowry’s The Giver: Dystopia or Utopia?

    2536 Words  | 6 Pages

    Louis Lowry’s The Giver uses a dystopian society as a metaphor to show how one lives without pain and lacks knowledge of other places in order to give the reader a warring that society will never be perfect. “The Giver offers experiences that enhance readers levels of inquiry and reflection.” (Friedman & Cataldo pp102-112) At First glance the novel's setting seems to be a utopia, where all possible steps are taken to eliminate pain and anguish. Often the difference between a Utopia and a Dystopia is the author’s point of view. The difference between dystopia society and a utopian society is that a “dystopia is a world that should be perfect but ends up being horrible. Imagine dystopia as a world where the government gives everything to everyone for free. You would think it would be perfect, but imagine if that government oppressed everyone. Essentially a Dystopia is a utopia that has been corrupted.” (Levitas p1) A dystopian society is “Any society considered to be a undesirable, for any number of reasons. The term was coined as a converse to a Utopia, and is most used to refer to a fictional (often near-future) society where social trends are taken to a nightmarish extreme. Dystopias are frequently frequently written as warnings, or satires, showing current trends extrapolated to a nightmarish conclusion. A dystopia is all too closely connected to current day society.” As defined in The Giver (Telgan pp162-182). This is why I believe that Lowery is giving the reader a warring about how our world is changing. We have the power to stop it before it happens if we listen to warring signs and act accordingly. If we don’t listen to those signs our society will become a nightmarish environment, to live in. “ The Giver demonstrates how conflict can force us to examine our most important beliefs about what is right and true. Conflicts can change our worldly view of thing.” (Freidmane & Catadlo pp102-112)

    Read More

  • Synonyms In The Giver

    601 Words  | 2 Pages

    Another word the community in The Giver is new child. A new child in the community is another word for a new born baby. A new born baby in real life usually is born under a mother and stays with that mom and usually stays with the family

    Read More

More about Dystopia In The Giver, By Lowis Lowry

Open Document