Sacrifices For a Perfect World
“If the world was perfect it wouldn’t be” - Yogi Berra. A perfect world is different in everyone’s eyes because we all have different interests and you would have to make sacrifices. Lois Lowry makes this clear in her fantasy novel, The Giver. Unknowingly living in a utopian society, the main character Jonas is Assigned the important job of the receiver of memory in his Community. No one knows what this means, but he later finds out that he burdens the Community from painful and joyous memories of the past (our world). The Giver transmits memories from generations back to Jonas. The Community, apart from Elsewhere, is a world without conflict, inequality, divorce, unemployment, injustice, and choice. Everyone
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As Jonas receives these memories, he ponders how their community would be different if they could make more choices. For example, after the Giver transmits Jonas a memory of family, Jonas thinks how crazy it is that they have generations and he says about his community, “‘What if they were allowed to choose their own mate?’”...”’Or what if’”...”’they could choose their own jobs?’” (124). Jonas then thinks if people should make these choices, and things that could go wrong if they did. For instance, while he is thinking about how crazy these choices are, he says, “‘I can’t even imagine it. We really have to protect people from wrong choices’”(124). People in his Community don’t choose their own spouse, the Community leaders assign them a spouse and children if they want. Jonas’s Community is brain-washed into not having opinions or choices. Although they have no divorce and wrong choices, Jonas would rather have choices and a real …show more content…
For example, when the Giver is explaining the concept of warfare to Jonas, he says, “‘...people had destroyed others in haste, in fear, and had brought about their own destruction’” (141). The Community gave up opinion and freedom for no war. Think about it, to have freedom in America, people have to fight for it in wars so if their is no freedom in the Community, there is no war. They also sacrificed religion because most wars are about opinions of religion, too. Because the Community will only let you have two children, the population is controlled and cannot get too big. This control eliminates hunger. For instance, after Jonas receives the memory of hunger, the Giver explains that, “‘The population was so big that hunger was everywhere. Excruciating hunger and starvation’” (140). To terminate war, there is no freedom and to remove hunger, there is no choice in how many children you can
The perfect world, no war, no disagreements, no fighting, and no problems. But is it really “perfect”? The Giver a novel by Lois Lowry takes place in a clean utopia where we find our main protaganist Jonas. We follow Jonas through his life eventually leading him to realize his world isnt perfect. This shows that there is flaws in all worlds and that no world can be “perfect” Jonas’s world is limited.
Utopia seems like a wonderful idea where everything is perfect and no one suffers. Three stories address this topic and show how even the best ideas have their downside. The Giver tells of a society where everything is the same and no one has to worry about making a wrong decision. Fahrenheit 451 tells of a society that bans book in the interest of preventing unhappiness. The society in Logan's Run is full of pleasure but only for 30 years. In practice though, these utopias present each of the protagonists with a problem where they question how perfect their perfect worlds really is.
Community, Empathy, and Sacrifice are three important themes that run through to book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. These are all important elements in the story; but the main theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is coming of age, a moment of transition from childhood to adulthood. The community of Maycomb is a small, low class town where the people are trapped in their own heads and don’t consider expanding out of their mindset. People’s lack of empathy affects how one person feels towards another person. When a character does feel empathy, they become more likely to sacrifice things that represent them. Through out the story these three things help contrast Jem and Scout from the
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
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...
Jonas decides to leave and change the lives of his people so that they can experience the truth. “The Giver rubbed Jonas’s hunched shoulders… We’ll make a plan” (155). Their plan involves leaving sameness and heading to Elsewhere, where Jonas knows the memories can be released to the people. He has a connection with Gabe, a special child who has experienced the memories, unlike the rest of the community. Jonas has a strong love for Gabe, and he longs to give him a better life. “We’re almost there, Gabriel” (178). Even with a sprained ankle, Jonas keeps pushing forward because he wants everyone to experience what The Giver has given him. He wants them to have a life where the truth is exposed. His determination allows him to make a change for a greater future in his community. This proves that Jonas has the strength to change his community for the
“The Giver shrugged. “Our people made that choice, the choice to sameness”. This quote supports my thesis because what the Giver meant by “Our people” was the committee of elders and how they chose sameness. If the committee of elders chose that then the people in Jonas’ community didn't have a choice, they don't even know. This also proves that people choose wrong when they have
Living in a perfect world is like living in an anthill. An ant does not think on it’s own, make it’s own decisions, and doesn't really have any own identity, just like the utopians. It is not worth living in a perfect world. The utopian society we are introduced to in the book, The Giver, has many different characteristics that make the perfect life unbearable. Examples of these things are The Receiver, the community, and the chief elders.
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.
In Achebe’s Novel Things Fall Apart one of the themes is that striving after titles, trophies, and status in general is rife with sacrifice – some too great to overcome. The status symbols in the novel and in the modern world are often sought after heavily. This leads to great strife amongst people and causes damage in multiple ways. One of the ways that striving for status makes one sacrifice, is that of their own personality, instead of being themselves, they feel as though they need to act a certain way to gain status. It can also cause people to sacrifice relationships to maintain their version of status and the way they perceive others think of them. Lastly, it can cause people to sacrifice their morality to achieve their goals of fame
Jonas is the protagonist in The Giver. He changes from being a typical twelve-year-old boy to being a boy with the knowledge and wisdom of generations past. He has emotions that he has no idea how to handle. At first he wants to share his changes with his family by transmitting memories to them, but he soon realizes this will not work. After he feels pain and love, Jonas decides that the whole community needs to understand these memories. Therefore Jonas leaves the community and his memories behind for them to deal with. He hopes to change the society so that they may feel love and happiness, and also see color. Jonas knows that memories are hard to deal with but without memories there is no pain and with no pain, there is no true happiness.
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
Nobody in the community knows what feelings or real, deep emotion is. They can’t live with music or color. They live in a bland community where everybody wears the same things. They live in a world of different shades of grey. They don’t have seasons, what would life be like without summer? Summers without sun wouldn’t be a problem in their community either because they have no weather. “‘What did you perceive?’ The Giver asked. ‘warmth’, Jonas replied, ‘and happiness’. ‘And--- let me think. Family. And something else--- I can’t quite get the word for it’. ‘It will come to you’. ‘Who were the old people? Why were they there?’ It had puzzled Jonas, seeing them in the room. The Old of the community did not ever leave there special place, the House of the Old, where they were so well cared for and respected. ‘They were called Grandparent.’ ‘Grand parents’” (123)? In this quote about Christmas Jonas learns more about family and being together, joyful. It’s sad that the community does not have anything special such as Christmas. Jonas learned the new concept (to him), of grandparents. He thinks grandparents are special but he doesn’t have real parents. At this point in the book Jonas understands real emotion and feeling for someone else, such as loving your family members, and he longs for that
...nts to pick his own spouse. Jonas is tired of sameness and little choices. “What if… he could choose? Instead of sameness”(pg98). He wanted to be free of sameness. Louis Lowry made it clear through Jonas that freedom of choice is a lot more important then sameness.
Jonas’ community chooses Sameness rather than valuing individual expression. Although the possibility of individual choice sometimes involves risk, it also exposes Jonas to a wide range of joyful experiences from which his community has been shut away. Sameness may not be the best thing in the community because Jonas expresses how much he feels like Sameness is not right and wants there to be more individuality. Giver leads him to understand both the advantages and the disadvantages of personal choice, and in the end, he considers the risks worth the benefits. “Memories are forever.”