New Harmony And The Community In The Giver

Throughout time their has been many attempts to create an utopian society. A utopian society is a society where all things are good. Although, there has never has been a society that has successfully completed this idea. One example would be New Harmony, Indiana. Another example would be the community in The Giver. Throughout the course of this paper one will find out the history, the similarities and differences, and the reasons for their failures of New Harmony and the community in The Giver.

Located in southwestern Indiana New Harmony was founded by the Harmonies or Rappites. Designed by Robert Owen, New harmony was an attempt at a perfect society through free education, social classes, and personal wealth. With help from his partner

Robert Owen was able to introduce the social reforms to America. Later on, the society ran into some issues that caused the downfall of its perfectness. Another utopian society would be the community in The Giver. The society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to "Sameness," a plan that has also terminated all signs of feelings, or emotions from their lives. The community lacks any color, memory, climate and terrain, all in an effort to have the people feel like there is an order to the community. Although, the two communities may seem very different there are still similarities.
With having such as contrasting history between the two societies, this leads to many differences between them. One example would be the rules in the community. A difference between the rules of New Harmony and the community is that New Harmony would allow education. Quoting the official site of the New Harmony Town Government, “Robert Owen's ambition was to create a perfect society through free education and the abolition of social classes and personal wealth” (http://www.newharmony-in.gov/about_new_harmony.php). This here clearly states that New Harmony was intentionally trying to educate the people by having free education. Although, it clearly states in The Giver, “The books in the giver’s dwelling had been the only books Jonas had ever seen ” (Lowry 74). This also shows that community is not intentionally trying to educate the people. Yet, there are still similarities between the rules of the two communities. A rule that is similar between the two communities is that both communities did not have everything be based off a certain religion. New Harmony and the community both had leaders, but these leaders both felt that it would not be necessary to have the rules be based off a certain religion.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a perfect society, this is due to many factors.

Both communities had a time when they were no longer considered “perfect.” For New Harmony this is because there was no commitment from the people, the people were doubtful, and poor leadership. The community in The Giver had a downfall just because one person within the community. This one person finally realized that this society was not actually perfect. Causing them to make a decision for themselves. Overall there is no way that a society can become perfect. That is based of all the reasons previously mentioned and many others. Humans cannot create something because they are not perfect themselves, so they cannot even imagine perfection.

Based on reading this paper, one can see that their is no such thing as a perfect society. Even though there have been many attempts to create an utopian society, it has yet to be successfully completed because of the reasons that were previously mentioned. Also, with reading this paper one has seen the history, the similarities and differences of the societies, and the reasons for their failures. Eventually there is hope that humans will be able to create a perfect society. This may be because of the fact that the human themselves are

perfect.