What Are The Similarities Between Anthem And The Giver

The Strange appeal in literature for today's teens
The world is in a spell of false security and your the only one that can see through it, you’re in a dystopian culture and you don't know how to get out. The dystopian genre is taking off in the teen community. The novel Anthem and the movie The Giver are greatly similar. Both storylines are about two men with a vision of the future that they share with no one else. For some strange reason young adults around the world seem to be connecting to these stories. Whether it's the pressure that both main character and real world teens share or the need to be different it is quite obvious they are in love. This love can be traced back to ,as appears in the The Giver, being able to connect with the main character, Jonas, as he learns about new feelings and sensations he never knew about and in Anthem when they understand the pressures that Equality feels from society. It can also be said that both Anthem and The Giver reach deep into a teens mind and bring forth the idea of society refusing to listen to ideas involving anything uncertain or different from belief of the time.

In modern day society humans of all age are pressured, more than the other age groups are teens, not unlike the main character in Anthem, Equality 7-2521.

Teens are offered multiple illegal substances, they must decide between sports or a job, and they must get homework done. These are just the beginning, as said by Equality in the book Anthem,“The learning was to easy for us....this was a sin… It is not good to be different from our brothers”(Rand 22-23). Teachers are telling him it's bad to be unique wich pressures him to try and change. Teens and children are commonly bullied or laughed at which causes them to try and change who they are. They are pressured to be like everyone else. Anthem is a playground of emotions and so are teens. It’s no wonder why they connect so

well.
As teens and children grow they start learning new emotions; teens learn what heartbreak is, what being truly proud can feel like, and lose when they just aren't good enough, such as the young teens in the film The Giver. Said by Jonas “I had learned that knowing what something is, is not the same as knowing how something feels” (Noyce). This quote states that knowing was something is, isn’t the same as knowing how it feels and that he was learning new feelings. Just like teens today, Jonas was learning new emotions and feeling throughout his learning. Teens are learning new emotions and feelings and no movie portrays that better than The Giver does.
Teens ideas are commonly thrown away when presented to adults whether the adult realize it or not they do this alot. Said by the council of scholars. “You have worked on this alone?”(Rand 72-73) The counsel is asking this because they believe that if not done together than it is not worth their effort. Adult will look over thing done by single people but notice thing done by a majority. Teens are able to connect to booth Anthem and The Giver because they can see the problems in society.
There are multiple reasons why teens can relate to Anthem and The Giver. The Giver presents the idea of isolation of knowledge and experiences. Teens may feel that they are experiencing things that they can't share with others. In Anthem the main character learns knowledge that is basically illegal to share with others. Teens may feel the same as people commonly treat new ideas as if they are incomprehensible or idiotict and discard them immediately.

Works Cited
Noyce, Phillip, director. The Giver. Tonik Productions, 2014.
Rand, Ayn, and Leonard Peikoff. Anthem. A Signet Book, 1961.