Chapter 15 Of The Giver

For the first time,he heard something that he knew to be music.He heard people singing. Jonas wipes his eyes and still saw the lights and houses with all the pretty lights.

How many freedoms would you be able to give up for a “perfect” society? In the book “The Giver”, describes a society where people are given an assignment at age 12. The main character, Jonas was appointed the Receiver and follows a wise old man with the name of “The Giver”. Over time he receives the good and bad memories of the past and soon realizes what his communities deepest darkest secrets. So where would I think the line between public safety and personal freedom should be drawn? I feel if that should be up to the individual and that people should be aware of what is the truth and not be hidden by anything. Being hidden by color/diversity/red, having no love as well as no hate, and no personal freedoms? Is that fair?

For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. As, Jonas and Gabriel were heading down the hill, jonas realized that he had no way of stopping the sled when they were near the town. He was trying to figure out a way but it was too late to try and stop the sled.

Jonas was suddenly filled with a new strength as he picked up Gabriel and trudged through the deep snow. He walked on towards the music that seemed to him to be the most beautiful thing in the world.

“You have made a terrible mistake.” The Chief Elder uttered in shock, her tongue cutting short of a hiss.

In The Giver, Jonas’ world is turned upside down when he is chosen to be the next receiver of his community. The ceremony of twelves is the last ceremony of the day. Jonas waited anxiously for his name to be called; he never hears it. The chief elder has made a mistake. Jonas now has to learn that everything he has been taught was not always the same and it ages him years.

Lord, Elyse. "Overview of The Giver." Novels for Students. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2016. Elyse Lord is one of the many critics who describe “The Giver” as terrifying but offering “hope and a constructive view” of the Utopian world in the book. She explains that other critics praise the book with many awards such as the Newberry Medal. Lord goes on to reason that the story is favored by different readers for its complexity, symbolism, metaphors, ambiguous ending, and can be compared similarly to classic science fiction like “Brave New World” and “Fahrenheit 451.” Contradicting this statement, Lord says that ‘librarians’, ‘educators’, and ‘students’ debate “The Giver” to be censored from public schools around the world because of its graphic scenes and ideas of infanticide and euthanasia. This includes the time Jonas witnessed his father murder a baby and throw it down a trash chute in cold blood. This is ironical compared to the language, emotion, and behaviors being censored in Jonas’s ‘Utopian’ society. Lord argues this through Anna Cerbasi of Port Saint Lucie, Florida, who asked the school board to remove a book that was about a family murdering their child for crying at night and called the book inappropriate for the sixth grade. Lord raises the question of who is to “decide which books are appropriate for which children,” and argues that it cannot be answered with not one but the many books integrated in school curricula that compose

Jonas is an eleven year old boy who lives in a community where everything is the same. Jonas has a flashback seeing a jet fly over the community, and everyone was frightened. The speaker comes on and tells everyone that a pilot in training was lost, and was to be released. Jonas says that being released was an “Overwhelming statement of failure.” Jonas' family has to tell their feelings every evening. His sister Lily talks about a visiting group of sevens’ who went to the school who had not obeyed the rules. She implied that they behaved like animals. Jonas’ father, who is a nurturer, tells them about a baby boy who doesn't seem to be growing and developing, as he should. He then states that the baby may be released. Lily wants to

“You’re not the same individual you were a year ago, a month ago, a week ago. You’re always growing experiences so don’t stop. That’s life” (Jorge Infante).

“Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo”

The echo continued to ring in Jonas’s ear, a sound of hope. It seemed unimaginable in the vast empty landscape that stood before him.

But perhaps it was only an echo. Sitting there in the sled looking upon the people in his Christmas memory but this time it wasn’t a memory it was real life. His parents & grandparents were was standing there in the night holding candles singing carols of old. He got out and they hugged him as if they got back from a trip far away and finally returned. All the sudden the parents grabbed Gabe while the grandparents grabbed Joneses hand and they walked to their house that was just around the corner. At that moment neither Gabe or Jonas were cold or scared of these people. In fact they forgot they lived in the community. They felt as if those were their real family members. On the way to the house they asked where the two went and why they didn’t

Returning to the fifth stanza, the enjambment used in “her noose a ring/ to store / the memories of love” (20-22) forces the reader to associate love with death. The ring of the noose can be seen as a marriage ring and so it can be inferred that love killed her. The image of the tarring and feathering and the inferred notion that love killed her, combined, provide the historical link into the present.

Jonas saw a small house in the distance, he found it a little weird that it was the only house there, but he still decided to walk towards it. Jonas knocked on the door of the house. The elderly woman looked down at Jonas and Gabriel with a worried look, and she quickly invited them in. Jonas explains he and his brother have had a long journey and they had no shelter. The people then said, “It’s time for dinner,” but Jonas found a delightful thing in the way she talked. He knew what it was but he couldn’t quite find the word. Jonas proceeded to the dinner table, then the kind lady said her name is “Winifred.” Jonas thought it was a delightful name. There was a Winifred in the community but she got released because she was one of the

Have you ever considered what happens to a person when they change? In the book 'The Giver', Jonas is similar in a few ways at the end of the book from the start. But why does this matter? When a person goes through difficult experiences, they are still the same in a lot of ways.