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Examples Of Happiness In The Giver

Decent Essays

True Happiness
The Giver is a dystopia novel written by Lois Lowry. In the story, the community lacks color, freedom and love. Jonas, the main character of the story, is selected to be a receiver of memories. Through instructions by the giver, Jonas learns the truth and secret of the society. In the story, Jonas seems to represent readers’ feelings or thoughts, so we can learn about ourselves by focusing on his behavior and words. In "The Giver," Lois Lowry shows us that we cannot achieve true happiness unless we are not respected as individuals, and freedom, knowledges and feelings are important factors for this. To begin with, Lois Lowry showed us how important freedom to choose is. In the community, people do not have freedom to choose their jobs, partners and families. Before Jonas became the receiver, he had been afraid of “uncomfortable category of “being different” ” (48). The society was …show more content…

In the story, Jonas and the giver are the only people who have memories and secrets of the community. That is why the receiver is “Greatly honored” (85). People who do not know such secrets are only to live obeying a lot of rules. They may not know the meaning of their lives. According to the book, Jonas said “without the memories, it’s all meaningless” (133). Also, when Jonas asked “Why do you and I have to hold these memories” (139), the giver answered “It gives us wisdom” (140). We can widen our horizons by wisdom. Also, we need wisdom to choose and to be free. In addition, memories are the sources of feelings, which are the third factor of happiness, as we can see in this sentence, “he thought that the feelings came also from the memories” (164) or “they could not feel it back , without the memories” (170). Understanding the world we live in is to understand ourselves and relationships between us and the world, and it contribute to form our own

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