Contradiction In Lois Lowry's 'The Giver'

In the community everyone wears the same clothes and has the same house so nothing ever looks different from the others. It is all even and fair and beautiful. Or so Jonas thought. Until Jonas received the memories of flowers in a meadow or of a boat on the sea he didn't really know what beauty is because he hasn't ever known what ugliness is. All of the people that Jonas has ever known have been kind and peaceful, always apologizing when a mistake is made.

The Giver is written from the point of view of Jonas. At the beginning of the book Jonas is an eleven-year-old boy living in a futuristic society that got rid of all sorrow, pain, fear, hate and war. Everyone looks and acts almost the same. Everyone is polite and there is no competition. Also the community is not allowed any kind of choices from the moment they were born to the moment they are released. For example, at the age of nine you are given a bike and are not allowed to ride a bike before that age. Also at the age of

In “The Giver”, written by Lois Lowry, one of the major theme’s is “sameness”, which effects very deeply the life of citizens in the community based on perfection.Sameness in somewhere just as this community, can either cause disadvantages or advantages at the same time, also including the loss of diversity.

The Giver describes a society in search of perfection, which is a recurring theme in literature. Somebody in Jonas’s society decided that eliminating or limiting choices and feeling, among other things, would ultimately create a perfect place in which to live. By eliminating and/or limiting choices and feelings, the creators were able to implement Sameness, which would then provide a conflict-less environment in which to exist.

The relevant theme shared by both text were sameness and equality. The both community were under the control of Chief or elder. In The Giver the reason Lois Lowry uses the word “sameness rather than “equality” because equality implies that people have certain basic human rights, which in the community in The Giver they didn’t. For example, they didn’t have the freedom to make choices as to who they marry or what job they do. However, since all their experiences throughout their early lives were controlled, they were all besides Jonas and The Giver. “So there will be a whole part of your life which you won’t be able to share with your family. It’s hard Jonas. It was for me.” said by the Giver because he had to sacrifice his life to become the Giver and he knew how hard it felt. In Harrison Bergeron, the government enforces their idea of equality by physically and mentally handicapping citizens. The beautiful must wear hideous masks or disfigure themselves, the graceful and strong must wear weight around their necks at all hours of the day and the intelligent must listen to earsplitting noises that impede their ability to think. “Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.” In both texts the protagonist try to solve a problem but they had created another problem by sharing it to the other members in the community. Also because they went against the rules and regulation the community were disrupted.

Lois Lowry's The Giver describes Jonas, as we jump into his world of sameness. But Jonas isn't quite the same as everyone else. With what is called ''the power to see beyond'', Jonas is able to see slight visions of color that no one else can. To them, the world is in black and white, to prevent any jealousy relating to color. When Jonas is selected to be ''the reciever of memory'', he is immediately confused, as he should've gotten assigned to a job like ''teacher of the fives''. It turns out with Jonas' special abillity comes great responsibility. When he meets The Giver, he finds out his new job will be to take the memories of the entire world from The Giver, to provide wisdom to the community when they most need it. Only Jonas, The Giver, and a select group of the community known as ''The Elders'' know what the world was before sameness came about. Sameness might be tough to describe, but the best way it could be put is that it's a eutopia with a multitude of downsides. With this, I hope to describe what the pros and cons of having a world of sameness would be.

The setting of The Giver takes place in a fictional community known as the “Sameness”. Life here is supposed to be "perfect" because there is no pain or suffering. They don’t have to take

The novel, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is an everlasting story that shows the importance of individuality. This novel is about a young boy named Jonas who was elected as the Receiver of Memories, a person who is given the memories from the world that existed before their current society, Sameness. In this society there is no individualism. People can not choose who to marry, or what they want to do for a living. Over time Jonas becomes more and more wise, and realizes that the supposedly perfect community actually has some very dark and negative aspects. The author, Lois Lowry is a 76-year-old writer who focuses her writing on helping struggling teenagers become individuals. Lowry had a very tragic childhood. After both of her parents were

The novel The Giver by Lois Lowry illustrates a dystopian society hi lighting the limitations of individuality and suppression of cultural memory in order to prevent any potential destruction that warrants deviation from the totalitarian state of mind with the society depends on. The dependence on the elaborately regulate system however causes the burden of beneficial and detrimental knowledge to the rest on one person's shoulders. Through sociological analysis I will analyze the effects of this reliance on the Giver’s ability to retain such crucial information on a singular causes the detrimental affect triggered not by the inability of the Giver but rather by the society’s unwillingness to change. It can be observed that dystopian societies are ambivalent in nature, situated in utopian text; however, in Lowry's novel the world is engineered where the utopia goes wrong due to its extinction of the aesthetic and personal choices. In “The Utopian the Function of memory in Lois Lowry’s the giver, the author analyzes the ambiguity between the dystopian aspect and the utopian aspect of the society created in the novel (Hanson).

In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the Giver and Jonas use the two following quotes to justify their community’s idea of “Sameness”, where everyone is the same but has no choice. The Giver tells Jonas, “Life here is so orderly so predictable—so painless.” In response, Jonas says, “We really have to protect people from wrong choices.” Eventually, both Jonas and the Giver realize that sameness is wrong and that it is better to be equal, to have the same rights, but able to choose to be different.

Sameness has many different aspects of how it could be an advantage. The most important advantage is that the idea of war is abolished. Everyone would agree with each other leading to no argument to cause war (Sofirex, “The Giver: Analyze the Advantages and Disadvantages of Sameness in Jonas's Community”). Back in the day the classes of citizens were very strict, well if you have a society that’s all the same there would be no classes. The terrain in the book is completely flat;

Through our society we are all raised up to be independent and unique individuals such as being ourselves and expressing who each of us are to the world. However, in the book The Giver by Lois Lowry, everyone is raised to count on one another and everyone must look and act the same. Our society differs from Jonas’s in many ways, such as the family units, birthdays, and the way we each learn about our past.

Everyone in the community can not have there own personalities because they have to be the same. There is a limit of two kids per family unit. There is nothing private in the community because they have to be the same. Sameness is bad because the receiver has to keep the pain a secret. The receiver is a person that keeps all of the memories. ¨but now you will be able to go farther back¨(Lois lowry 116) The Giver tells Jonas “being the receiver makes family life hard”(Lois Lowry 132). Sameness is bad because they have to take away color. Color is taken away because some people can not see color and then they are not the same. Why did colors disappear’ is what Jonas asked the Giver when he found out that everyone can not see color. (Lois Lowry 120)The government pick spouses and the child which results in no love. “Do you love me” asked Jonas.(Lois Lowry 159)It is clear that sameness is bad because there is no love in the community.

Lois Lowry’s novel, The Giver, offers a thought provoking, well written story, because it changes the perspective of anyone who dares to read it to. Lowry places her novel, at some point in the future when mankind has gone away with changes and choices in life. She forces readers appreciate, or at least re-think the world they live in today. Her novel presents a fully human created environment where people have successfully blocked out conflict, grief, and individuality. Each person follows the same routine every day. Failure comply with standards, to be different, means death. Jonas, the main character, finds himself trapped in this world.

In the book The Giver Jonas and the community have little choices they can make. In America we have lots of choices like how long your hair is, what you are going to wear to school and what color we want to wear. In Jonas’ community they cant even do that. Jonas left the community because he yearned for the freedom of choice. “If every things the same, then there aren’t any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things”(PG97). Jonas wants to be able to pick his own tunic and job, but in the giver community he cant. He wants to pick his own spouse. Jonas is tired of sameness