Literary Analysis Of The Giver

The Accumulation of Knowledge and Wisdom Through Memories: A Literary Analysis of The Giver Why do we have memories? What is the role of memories? The Giver by Lois Lowry is situated in a peaceful utopian community, where the inhabitants of the community live without memories of color, music, love, animals, death, sadness, war, and much more. Among the residents of the community, there is a ‘receiver of memory’. The ‘receiver of memory’ receives the memories from the preceding ‘receiver of memory’, and they are the only people with memories. In The Giver, Jonas, the narrator of the story, becomes the receiver of memory. Motivated by the knowledge and wisdom he has developed from the memory he received, he sets off for elsewhere with his brother,

In the novel, Jonas witnesses his two best friends, Asher and Fiona playing a game of war, along with many little kids. In this moment, Jonas, who experienced war, pain, and death, feels disappointed, hurt, and mad. “Feelings surged within Jonas. He found himself walking forward into the field. [...] In his mind, Jonas saw again the face of the boy who had lain dying on a field and had begged him for water. He had a sudden choking feeling, as if it were difficult to breathe”(Lowry 168). As Jonas stands in the center of the field, he has a flashback to the moment of his training with the giver when he gained the memory of war and death. Jonas knows from this experience that war is not something that is entertaining and that the concept of war and death is horrendous and painful. Jonas who gained wisdom and knowledge through memories, then asks Asher, the recreation manager, to stop the game of war. Even outside the book, in the real world, the exact same thing happens. For instance, the schools gaining knowledge and wisdom from the past memories of wars, prohibited students from playing war games or making gun shapes with their hand and shooting at someone. Furthermore, the world also obtains knowledge and wisdom from experiences and memories of the past. For example, the governments of nations wisely chooses their action based on the knowledge and wisdom they have developed from the predecessors’