Dystopian Community In The Giver

The setting in the Giver is this community where the people inside are not able to feel or to have a choice of their own. Could you ever imagine yourself living in a world where you couldn’t be able to feel and have a choice of your own? Well, I really couldn’t imagine myself in Jonas’s position. Jonas’s society is very different compared to our society. One thing which is different from our society than Jonas’s society is that we can have feelings.

In the book, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, a young boy named Jonas lives in a community of Sameness, where all memories of color, joy, and sadness have been eliminated from the citizen’s daily lives, and where freedom of choice has been deemed, “definitely not safe”(Lowry 98). Suddenly, though, Jonas’s life spirals out of control when he becomes the Receiver of Memory. He is charged with the job of receiving all past occurrences, both good and bad. Finally, he decides that joy and love are emotions that need to be shared, and flees the community, resulting in the return of the memories. This dystopian setting puts many restrictions on available information, citizens’ personal lives, and changes the way deaths are handled, and is very different from the society in which we live.

The Giver Simply, a dystopia is defined as a bad place, a place where no one would want to live, a place in which one's rights and freedoms would be gone, a place where the environment would be devastated. Dystopia is created from the Greek prefix “dis” meaning bad, harsh, or wrong and the Greek root “topos” meaning place. The Giver proves all of these characteristics true. Jonas and his community receive no freedom or pain.

In today’s society there are many authors who write dystopian novels. They write these novels to give knowledge and to tell how our world is very different from dystopian life. Lois Lowry shows readers how people can suffer in dystopian society. In The Giver, Jonas’ community appears to be a utopia, but in reality it is a dystopia because everyone is under the illusion that there is freedom, dehumanization, and their strict regulations.

Imagine a world without color and love. Jonas, protagonist, in The Giver, his world was meant to be a utopia but it turned into a dystopian society. Comparing jonas’s society to modern day society they are two very different places. Jonas’s world has no love, they experience sameness, and do not experience freedom of choice; modern day society has freedom of love, a variety of weather, and we celebrate individual choices. First of all, Jonas’s society does not experience love, while modern day society does.

Two Become One “Dystopia contains a little utopia, and every utopia contains a little dystopia. It’s very true”, a thought by Margaret Atwood, a canadian novelist, stating that in every society, utopian and dystopian qualities are seen. Margaret brings to account the controversy of how our world is a dystopia and utopia. There is always an illusion of a utopia and dystopia in the world, without those illusions the world would not contain the beauty it is today. In both societies there are similar and different aspects to a dystopia and utopian world at the cause of suicide, and the abundance of individuality.

As George Orwell said “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot be conscious.” In the book The Giver everything is different, they are controlled, and have no emotions. In the modern day you can choose who you love, and choose what you do. The society in The Giver has very few similarities compared to our society today; however, there are many more differences that set them apart.

When many people think of a dystopian society, like the society in The Giver by Lois Lowry, they think of the worst possible conditions and an overall farfetched idea of an actual society. In our modern day society, we can in fact see color, and we have an abundance of memories, but can our daily life be at all that different from the epitome of a dystopian society in The Giver? There are various differences between both societies as well as similarities. For example, our society has a different ideal where we appreciate differences unlike the dystopian society in The Giver that disparages differences. Our society also contrasts from the dystopian society since the people in The Giver society have fewer choices, like how they can only see in

The human race has spent millennia trying to form utopian societies, but have failed, and instead created dystopias. Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver dives deeper into the vast concept of ideal and perfect societies and then introduces the differences presented between our society and an organized and well thought out utopia. From this we know that life in the dystopian society of The Giver is different than the life in our society today. One of the first differences that can be noted between our lifestyles is the structure of our families, most importantly the amount of offspring included in a family.

The Giver was a dystopian society because, it seems like a perfect world but it really isn’t, if anything is it very unpleasant or bad. Some of the ways The Giver is a dystopian society is that for one, you don’t have have feelings like love, sadness, loss, and pain so you don’t really feel anything for anyone or anything. Another disadvantage is that you can’t see color. When you see color it makes it so beautiful and you can relax but, it’s all black and white. The Third disadvantage is that you get executed if your a twin, too old, or you have been naughty.

The Giver Emelly Sierra “Always question always wonder” – (The Giver, the movie). This quote relates because Jonas is becoming the Receiver of Memory and this means he questions all the memories he is receiving. In the dystopian society represented in The Giver there are several transformations and similarities from our recent day including school, family, birth, and career. Our school is a little similar to their school because we get grades and move up a grade, on the other world they also move up a grade.

Although The Giver was written and published in the early 1990’s, the book portrays many social, political, and cultural issues that were thriving at the time of its creation. Lowry's novel was written in light of events around the world including abortion and medical assisted suicide. The community in The Giver was set to be a utopian society with no hunger, suffering, or war, but also no color, music, or love. What also comes with this society is little to no privacy, even “private” houses have two-way intercoms which can be used to listen in for breaking the rules. In this way, The Giver is part of the tradition of dystopian novels.

The final reason that I think the Giver portrays a dystopian society is their method of release. They may think that they’re sorting out good and bad, but what do they know? If they don’t know anything about love, why should they know about pain, suffering, death, and war? Everyone outside of the releasing room thought their dear friend was going Elsewhere… but the people inside that horrid room witnessed, or committed, the murder of innocents. There were no such things as identical twins; the lighter one would be killed. The people had no perception of death, for all they know that little baby, which just happened to be 3 ounces lighter than his brother, could really be going Elsewhere. Even if they’re traveling there through a garbage chute. Not only children were released though, as Jonas’ mother tells them it can happen to the middle aged too, “‘You know that there’s no third chance. The rules say that if there’s a third transgression, he simply has to be released.’” (pg.9). Some people were so ignorant on the subject that they used the word as a joke, like the speaker when the pilot flew over the town, “NEEDLESS TO SAY, HE WILL BE RELEASED, the voice had said, followed by silence. There was an ironic tone to that final message, as if the Speaker found it amusing…” (pg.2). Who wants to

Imagine living in a world where everything is under complete control. You have no say so in what happens. Well, if we had a world like that , it would be considered a utopia. A utopia is imagined and under total control. In The Giver, I believe that Jonas lives in a utopian community. Since everything is totally controlled, mostly everything is perfect, and it almost seems imaginary, The definition of utopia fits almost exactly in his community.

Lois Lowry’s The Giver is set in a futuristic, dichotomous society, one that is both utopian and dystopian. In response to the overwhelming destruction and chaos in the world, the Elders have attempted to create and maintain a peaceful and orderly utopia, but this security comes at a price. The citizens of the community have sacrificed their individuality and freedom. Although most adult members have some knowledge of the hypocrisies involved, they choose to perpetuate the deception, allowing the community, as a whole, to continue on blissful ignorance. When young Jonas is confronted with all the truths of the present and all the memories of the past, he must choose for himself