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Utopia as a social model
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Utopian society essays
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I read the book The Giver by Lois Lowry. This book was really good and shows what life would be like if everything were a utopia. This book is really engaging and almost has you engaged from the beginning to end. I like the way it was written out and it really shows what life can be like in the future. However, It does show negatives about everything being the same and that was something I thought really stood out. The Author gives great detail about the way of life. There are many laws in Jonas’s city. “Two children – one male, one female – to each family unit. It was written very clearly in the rules.” (Pg. 26)This is an example of one of the laws. You can only have two children, a boy and a girl. I think this is very different because in our society, people can have as many children as they want. Boys or Girls. My family has three boys and we do perfectly fine. When the kids grow up and are in their teenage years, they are assigned a job based on their personalities and what the elders think …show more content…
“The worst part of holding memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”(pg. 238) This quote shows that the person with all the memories feels lonely because he/she isn’t allowed to share their memories. No else is allowed to remember what life was like and how others societies are living. There is one specially assigned job the be the giver/receiver. That person is the only allowed to have memories and keeps every memory there has ever been. Once that person gets too old, he passes them on down to the next person chosen by the elders. In our reality, we get to keep our memories and we get to be who we are. Along with that, The government has cameras put up in the city to watch people to make sure everyone is behaving and no one is acting out. In our city, there may be cameras but the government isn’t going to come and take you for being who you
The Giver and Matched are both futuristic societies with a lot of rules. In The Giver the Elders choose their match as well as their children. Jonas starts loving Fiona but isn’t allowed and stops taking the pill. In Matched the officials choose their match but they can have their own children. Cassia is matched with Xander but also loves Ky and doesn't know what to do. In both story they all get jobs for the rest of their lives but in Matched they just call it vocations. Jonas gets the Receiver of memory and Cassia is supposed to be the sorter.
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.
This is because our society does not limit the number of members in a family unit and the type of members in it. For instance, a family could contain the parents, children, grandparents, and other relatives. In contrast, the society in The Giver limits the number of members in a family unit and what a family unit is made out of. "Two children-one male, one female-to each family unit. It was written very clearly in the rules" (Lowry 8). This quote explains that every family unit has four members that contain the parents and two children, one of each gender. The society in The Giver does not allow any changes in the number or the gender of the members in a family unit. Although both societies have an organized way of the structure of a family unit, our society is better because it gives us the freedom of deciding what we want and expect of a family unit.
Having the Ability of free will can shape the way we think. When Jonas learns the truth about being released means he chooses to escape the community with Gabriel . In the book when Jonas sees the video of his own father, killing Gabriel’s twin via lethal injection, and throws it down a garbage shoot. When the community elders decide to kill the old for living out his or her lives or babies who are not up to standard is their way of population control. For example in our world capital punishment is a debatable subject and to control the prison population. Weather to kill someone for committing a crime or letting them rot in prison for the rest of their life. Sometimes we do need to take
In The Giver, a narrative by Lois Lowry, Jonas’s father illustrates his feelings during his Ceremony of Twelve and Jonas tells about his own feelings concerning the forthcoming event. In the text it states, “‘But to be honest, Jonas,’ his father said, ‘for me there was not the element of suspense that there is with your ceremony. Because I was already fairly certain of what my Assignment was to be,’”(Lowry, paragraph 3). This segment of text elucidates the reason of Jonas’s father’s lack of surprise of his Assignment. As stated above, Jonas’s father was already certain of his Assignment, which he continues to explain to be a Nurturer. Jonas’s father explains that as a result of the love he showed all the Newchildren and the time he spent at
Did you know that "The Giver" is set 50 years in the future? "The Giver" is a story about a boy named Jonas, who is chosen to be his community’s next Receiver of Memory. Jonas’s community revolves around the idea of sameness, and only Jonas can see the world as it truly is. The imagery in this text creates moods that have similar and different importances to the plot and story.
When he turns twelve, his job for the rest of his life is decided as the Receiver. His job is to receive all the memories the previous Receiver has held on to. While this is beneficial for Jonas as he is able to leave the society and his job of the Receiver behind and gets freedom, the community is left without someone to take the memories from The Giver. This is an example of conformity because a few of the Receivers before Jonas had left the community due to the things they were learning and finding out about the community, which changed the way they viewed the society. They then realized that they do not want to do this for the rest of their life, and for their job to sit around and hold memories as no one else is capable of knowing them is not something they want to do. To conclude, Jonas’s action to run away from the society follows in the footsteps of the others, and if others follow Jonas, there may never be a Receiver for the Jonas’s
Evelyn Sanchez (esanchez47@student.cccd.edu) Professor Leighton English 143, Final Essay 21 May 21, 2014 What the heck happened to Jonas? Topic #2. The Giver is actually one of my all-time favorite books, so I’ve looked into why she left the book so inconclusive in the past. The Giver is basically about a boy named Jonas who lives in a perfect society. He lives in a household with his two parents and his little sister Lilly.
And choose wrong?” (P.98). From reading this, I feel that the community was able to control problems such as divorce, rape, teen pregnancy, and AIDS. They all are given a life that is predictable, orderly and painless. Mostly, they have no memory or experience. In reality, we learn from our mistakes to be better each day. Experience is the best teacher in the world; unless one goes through sorrow, he or she will never know how it feels. “Warmth, Jonas replied and happiness. And let me think. Family, that it was a celebration of some sort, a holiday. And something else I can’t get the word for it. Jonas hesitated; I certainly liked the memory, though. I couldn’t quite get the word for the whole feeling of it, The Giver told him the feeling that was so strong in the room is love” (P.125). Family in the novel is described as a group of people that have a unit or bond that they share each day together.
The people in the community have absolutely no choices what so ever. The people already have their whole life rolled out in front of you without even knowing it. The council chooses your spouse, your family unit, your job, what you do everyday and how to do everything everyday. The rules that Jonas gets restrict him from doing certain things. “1. Go immediately at the end
This book is about a community where everything is stainless. It is a blank world with no color or feelings. At the ceremony of Twelve, everyone is accepting their Life Assignments as they are going to the path of maturity. However, a boy named Jonas is instructed a special job with The Giver to learn about the power of feelings and lies. When he puts his power at his own risk, he gets his family and everyone he loves in danger.
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
We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others” (97). In the book The Giver by Lois Lowry, no one has seen a rainbow after a storm, no one knew what colors were; what choosing was; what it meant to be an individual. Everyone lived in complete Sameness, and never learned what it meant to be an individual. By eliminating as much self expression as possible in Sameness and society, Jonas's community has rejected the individuality of a society where people are free to move society forward. In The Giver individuality is represented by colors, memories, and pale eyes.
The purpose of this book was to show us a possible version of a "Utopia".