Internal Struggles Of The Bread Giver

    The story in The Giver by Lois Lowry takes place in a community that is not normal. People cannot see color, it is an offense for somebody to touch others, and the community assigns people jobs and children. This unnamed community shown through Jonas’ eye, the main character in this novel, is a perfect society. There is no war, crime, and hunger. Most readers might take it for granted that the community in The Giver differs from the real society. However, there are several affinities between the society in present day and that in this fiction: estrangement of elderly people, suffering of surrogate mothers, and wanting of euthanasia.

During the early nineteenth century, families of immigrants undergo assimilation to unite themselves in American customs. The ideology that they will be accepted into a society and embrace American identities has driven them to this process. A reality of upward mobility and freedom are highly desired for immigrants’ transition. One author who portrays the temptation of this “New World” America for the Jewish children arriving and having their lives greatly affected is Anzia Yezierska’s “Bread Givers” while focusing on the truth of forming an American identity. An autobiography written by Mary Antin “The Promised Land” incorporates the accuracy of family assimilation and its outcome on the identity of their children is shaped by American meritocracy

    Several changes have occurred since the 1920s in traditional family values and the family life. Research revealed several different findings among family values, the way things were done and are now done, and the different kinds of old and new world struggles.

Sara Smolinsky is the youngest of four sisters; the eldest is Bessie, whom everyone calls the “Burden-bearer” because the whole family lives on her pay check. “I knew the landlord came that morning hollering for rent. And the whole family were hanging on Bessie’s neck for her wages. Unless she got work soon, we’d be thrown in the street to shame and to laughter for the whole world.”(1) The second eldest

In his short story, “The Semplica-Girl Diaries”, the author George Saunders crafts an all too human tale as he shows the journal entries of the narrator, a husband and father of three who faces financial insecurity, and displays the effect money, whether in lack or excess, has on our actions and thoughts. The social setting of the story is almost identical to our current society, however there is a distinct divergence in the Semplica Girls, which are girls from impoverished backgrounds that hang from a wire in their heads as an odd, inhumane, and yet expensive, lawn ornament. In the pursuit of the “good life” for both his family and himself, the father places great importance on wealth in order to secure happiness, joy, and status through

In Alexander Solzhenitysn’s story “Matryona’s Home”, Solzhenitsyn creates a relationship between an out of town visitor, Ignatch and an elderly woman, Matryona. Matryona reluctantly opens up her home to Ignatch, over the course of their housing together they begin to form some sort of a friendship. Ignatch begins to understand Matryona’s way of life that “she illustrates a spirituality that eschews greed and self-interest” (Paloni). Her willingness to help others without expecting anything in return is her main flaw and ends up becoming the death of her. Foreshadowing and irony are used throughout the story to show how society misuses Matryona.

This novel made me learn that, even when we are in times of struggle or need ourselves, we need to think about others. About how we should be less self-serving when there others we could help. Which in turn makes us feel better, the joy we give to others often is returned with a very rewarding feeling. When you can barely scrape enough together to keep yourself alive, the last thing most of us are thinking about is helping someone else. However, the generosity Uri, Mischa, and the other thief children is so great, that they still insist on giving to those around them. Uri and Mischa, after their nightly raids, would go over to the orphan house and give them food and toys. When the Jewish people are all taken prisoner and put in “the ghetto”, Mischa chooses to join them, even though he is not Jewish. He is a small boy and is able to fit through small gaps in the fence in order to steal and bring back food for his starving friends and their families. Uri has managed to escape, so now it is up to Mischa alone to bring food to the orphan house. It is dangerous eneough to feed his friends, let alone the orphans, but still Mischa goes out his way to make sure they have enough to survive. Jesop, a man staying the Ghetto, “you go, every night you go. Why do you come back?” This made me realise that, if people who have nothing can still give so much, then the rest of us who have

“I know I’m a fool. But I cannot help it. I haven’t the courage to live for myself. My own life is knocked out of me. No wonder Father called me the burden bearer.” This was regarding Bessie, this shows how Bessie’s life was shaped through the influence of religious teachings, forcing herself to stay loyal to the societal expectation and giving up her personal pursuits. She calls herself the “burden bearer” because it was the religion and/or societal teaching for females in Judaism should dedicate their lives to men’s. This was, in fact, the case in which every female figure of the Smolinsky family has suffered throughout the book. Sarah, too, was suffering from such conflict until she realized this is not what she sees herself into if she is to make herself break out the poverty and the so called “religious obedience”.

The Smolinsky parents come to America with Old World ideals ingrained into them. They do not take into

     After leaving Poland to venture out into the New World of America, the Smolinsky family endured impoverished lifestyles and countless hardships. For example, After an incident between Reb and the landlady (which made Reb revered), boarders began to occupy the Smolinsky family’s

In The Giver the authorities aim at achieving “Sameness” which means all people must be equal and the same. Lois Lowry describes a world of “sameness” where the lack of differences allows all members of the community to have predetermined roles and to follow an enforced set of rules. The Elders depict sameness in a way that makes it sound absolutely necessary, and without it, the whole world may fall apart. In the community of The Giver people accept everything as it is because they do not know any difference: “Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time … we relinquished sunshine and did away with difference” (Lowry, Giver 95). This sameness is terrifying and further imposes conformity on all people. So the community of The Giver is a uniformed society. People wear the same clothes; eat the same food; their houses are the same; and most of them look the same as well. By the age of ten, they all have the same short hair style: “females lost their braids at Ten, and males, too, relinquished their long childish hair took on the more manly style which exposed their ears” (Lowry, Giver 46). In The Giver the purpose of sameness is to protect people from wrong choices and to achieve safety for them.

First of all, in both stories we found a parent-child relationship. In scholarship baby exists a mom/daughter relationship that is showed along the story. At the end of this story, the protagonist states, “Ma, with a little more that you had. Twenty dollars in the drawer, friends and prayer for he hard time. We need a lot of tickets to ride, lot of chance. I didn’t make it like you thought, but I made it another way. And I’m still exceptional, along with al the others. Beauty and brilliance right here”. This demonstrates how much she cares about her mom and the relationship that they had. In contrast, in bread story there is a father/soon relationship and we can see it easily when they get together to work or when his father offers a job to him.

Sara Smolinsky main goal in life is to find her own way and do what she wants. She desired to be inspired like when she was when she read Morris Lipkins poetry. When in her teen years, she dreamt of becoming a teacher so that everyone’s focus would be on her similar to her dad when he preaches. So eventually she felt like she was being held back at home and decided to leave to go find, and do, what made her happy. While away in school she received a marriage proposal from Max Goldstein and decided to reject him because he would have made her stop going to school. When she rejected him she thought she made a connection between her and her father. She thought that her rejecting Max was similar to her father rejecting success in the outside world so he could study and do God’s work.

Concluding with the questions that Dr. Richardson, I would like to say that I learned a lot of new material while doing this research paper. I was familiar with the Jewish religion and the historical event of the Holocaust, but not so much about the role that women played within in. When I first started to do this research paper, I thought that Jewish women were going to be treated and seen way lower then what the male was seen as. I guess you can say I was stereotyping women because of how they are “normally” seen in every other religion or even everyday life. However, the fact that Jewish women were seen as the leaders per say of the household, really surprised me. Also, how they were the ones who taught the young children, kind of surprised me too. The fact that Jewish women had a vital part in

Mr. Smolinsky places the words of the Torah, words of the Old World, above the wellbeing of his own family. His specific use of the phrase “I’m not living for myself” especially echoes the phrase parents often use with regard to caring for their children. However, Reb’s use of the statement flips the meaning of that common notion to justify not caring for his children. This reiterates his lack of understanding of American language and culture. Furthermore, not only does Reb’s full immersion into the Torah impact his ability to care for his family, but it also leads him to completely reject any form of New World thought. In Sarah’s endeavor to obtain a New World formal education, Mr. Smolinsky argues: