Essay On Happiness In The Giver

Sadness vs. Happiness

In Lois Lowry’s dystopian novel The Giver we learn that as human beings we need sadness and pain. Humans need it because without pain, we would no longer have joy and happiness. There is an opposite to everything, and that is what makes our life so special. People don’t like pain but it is what builds us and makes us stronger and it gives us knowledge for later on conflicts. We don’t realize it but pain is there for a reason, to conquer it and make us happy. Pain and suffering is temporary. Everyone wants to be happy but if we want to be happy we need to defeat what’s in our way, sadness.

In addition everyone’s life has a story filled with good and bad memories and that is what makes it so distinguished from Jonas

and the Community. The Community thinks that they are perfect without pain and they’re right, sort of because they still do not feel any emotion towards something. “Well, there you are Jonas. You were wondering about release”, The Giver said after showing a video to Jonas about what his dad does for a living [189]. They are killing people with poison and that is Jonas’ father’s job that he was assigned to. The problem with it is that his father had no emotion doing that because the Community took that emotion and all the other emotion out of there way of life. No one except for Jonas who’s job was the successor of the Receiver of Memory, the Giver, and Rosemary who committed suicide over the stress of the job knew about pain and sadness so the people in the Community don’t realize what a waste their life is without sadness. They don’t realize it because it tells us that they take pills for almost everything including pain like when the loudspeaker said, “ A reminder that stirrings must be reported in order for treatment to take place.”They never get feel emotion towards another [47]. They don’t care because they have never felt feelings like love or pain before and we show a lot of it in our time. A good life needs happiness and sadness but the Community disagrees because they’ve never felt it inside them.
Furthermore the Community is not thinking straight because they want to live a life with no pain but that they would also be taking away their life’s meaning.

The Giver [120] tells Jonas, “ Our people made a choice, the choice to go to sameness.” Having pain and sadness in our life is a big warning system and helps protect you but the Community throws it away like it’s nothing [137] Jonas was given a memory of sledding down a hill and breaking a bone and so he knew it was bad because it gave him warning. Pain is a great human quality and it was meant to be there right with us throughout our lives. If they don’t want pain then they don’t want happiness either. I love knowing that I have feelings like that because we know it keeps us

safe.
Likewise people don’t love each other and that could affect how they think.

Jonas [159] asked his parents if they loved him and they said, “ Jonas. You of all people. Precision of language please.”Love is a bond between people and it is what makes us human. Back on page 159 Jonas’ parents don’t say they love Jonas because the pills have taken that emotion out of them and that would mean that they don’t love each other. A lot of decisions made in our time is based on love but since the Community gave that up they only take up space and work then die. Love is a persuasion and it doesn’t always help but that is how we think on

things.
Pain is a temporary human quality and it is good because happiness is right there as well. God put us on this Earth with pain so we can take it over and pick ourselves up and turn it into joy. Every day is a journey and we need to make the most of it. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel and we need to find it.