Relations And Issues In Lois Lowry's The Giver

“’Memories are forever”’ (Lowry). People make new memories every day without even realizing it. Some good some bad, that’s just the way of life, but in The Giver nobody knows what happened before them. People barley remember what their childhood was like, they don’t understand the importance of memory and that memories are forever. Aspects of life, rules, and prosperities between our world and Jonas’ world are very different yet have some similarities. Things that are crucial to the characters in The Giver are not as meaningful to the people in our world.

Imagine a world with no feelings, no color, no choice; a world where individuality and freedom are exchanged for security and sameness. This type of world is a reality for Jonas, the protagonist in Lois Lowry’s The Giver. After being assigned the next Receiver of Memories in the community, where he has the capacity to see beyond. As he begins his works, he gains wisdom and through that wisdom, learned that protecting the community from the memories, their lives lacked understanding and feelings. Jonas goes on an archetypal hero’s journey and chooses to risk everything to restore memories and wisdom to everyone in the community. Throughout this novel, Jonas is represented as a hero considering he demonstrates integrity despite living in a

Equality, the harsh rules, and the secrecy negatively impact society in The Giver and proves that if equality is wrongly understood, it can have a bad impact on society. The impacts are shown clearly in many ways throughout the beginning of the novel in the society. The citizens all have to go through a day when they are “a 12” when they get chosen for their jobs in the future. The protagonist named Jonas is chosen to a very special job named the receiver. The point of this job is to receive the memories of the past to keep them from being released to the society around. There are many painful memories and happy ones. In one of his first happy memories, Jonas sees his first-ever glimpse of color and starts to have different thoughts about the black and white world around him. He reacts to the memory and says “‘But I want them!’” Jonas said angrily. “‘It isn’t fair that nothing has color!’” (Lowry 122). After this and

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.

Potter Stewart once said, “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.” Often times, people try to censor works of literature because they feel that they contain inappropriate content that should not be shown to the public. Many have attacked Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver for its controversial content. The Giver is centered around Jonas, a boy who lives in a seemingly peaceful community where differences within people have been eradicated and people have no memories. Each member of the community is assigned a position in society to help the community function as a whole. When Jonas turns twelve, he is selected to be the Receiver of Memory. Only he and his predecessor, the Giver, know the truth and memories of the past. Feeling burdened with these memories, Jonas decides to flee the community altogether. Many people believe that this heart-warming novel contains questionable content that should not be shown to the public. Although some argue The Giver contains explicit sexual content,

The Giver, by Lois Lowry is about a young boy named Jonas who is growing up in a utopian society. In The Giver they have no memories of anything that has pain even involved which meant that the community had to get rid of some joyful things also. Jonas, the receiver, and The Giver himself are the only two that know the memories. The author, Lois Lowry, was given the Newbery medal in 1994. In her acceptance speech of the medal she stated things in her life that influenced her book, The Giver. Many of the events in Lois Lowry’s life had really influenced many of the big events in The Giver.

Jonas’ has had a variety of interesting experiences throughout the book. The Giver by Lois Lowry is about Jonas and he goes through many changes in his life with some help from the Giver. Jonas’ experiences develop a theme over the course of The Giver by teaching the reader for every action there is a consequence. Although some readers may believe that there will not be a consequence, Jonas’ experiences show that there are good and bad consequences for everything you do.

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 giver by Lois Lowry was an interesting book to say the least. In the beginning you are lead to believe these are normal kids and characters, possibly in the future, but in pretty much the same state of mind as our definition of “human” today. As the book goes on, you are slowly let in on details, like the characters can not see color, and that the parents are not biological parents, and everything is organized and decided for the characters in the book. The author did a great job of slowly bringing us into the world of sameness quite the same way the giver slowly brought Jonas into the world of memories. I believe the subject of the book is the Importance of the Individual. As corny as it sounds, we spend much of our life trying to be just like everyone else. I think Lois Lowry wrote this entire novel just to show how horrible it would be if everyone was the same as everyone else.

The dystopian novel, The Giver by Lois Lowry is about a boy called Jonas becoming the new Receiver-of-Memories. Throughout the novel, the protagonist, Jonas matures as knowledge is gained, and begins to understand the deepest, and darkest secrets of the community he lives in that is seemly 'perfect'. The author has successfully analysed a variety of social issues present in today's modern world in the novel. Some issues implied are: lack of individuality which allows for easy control, the abandonment of emotions and the importance of memories.

Jonas lives in a world of Sameness. In his community, life has been changed to be a place without color, choice, feelings, love, or inequality - a “perfect” world to all. No one ever complains: this is how the community runs, and has been running for as long as citizens can remember. At age 12, Jonas is assigned his life work as the Receiver of Memory and joins a mysterious old man named the Giver. The Giver uses his knowledge help the community make the right choices in times of crisis. He shares his memories about when life had the things that make life amazing - the color, the love, the feelings, the passion. Jonas is amazed and decides his world desperately is in need of change. The problem is, he doesn’t know how to fix his choreographed world to the place he envisions when Sameness is all anyone has ever known. Therefore, Jonas and the Giver make a plan to release memories to the people of the land and give them the wonders they’ve never known. Jonas runs away with the baby he loves, Gabriel, from the

Lois Lowry’s young adult classic The Giver has been a staple of classrooms across the country since its release in 1993. While a dystopian setting is commonplace in modern young adult fiction, Lowry’s work came years earlier. The focus of The Giver, however, is not so much on the mysterious, flawed society as much as it is the growth of the main character, Jonas. The novel follows Jonas as he goes from a naïve child concerned with what job his is going to get and how he is going to stay in touch with his friends, to a mature young man with knowledge deeper than any of his peers. He becomes more complex as he begins his work as the Receiver and receives memories the leaders of his society have deemed unnecessary for all to know. On several occasions in the text, Jonas receives life-changing revelations about the world as it once was and as it actually is in his community.

Lois Lowry’s The Giver is a novel that showed how Jonas was saving everyone's lives by not quitting after painful memories that he receives from the

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.

When I read Lois Lowry’s The Giver, I slide into a future world. Although everything seems normal at first, slowly the differences crash against my mind – the rules, the families, the entire community, so different from my own. I chafe at the restrictions on language and squirm as I realize the control the community lives under. When Jonas discovers the truth, I feel hope for him, but sadness for the people around him who are blinded to color, variety, and emotion. My heart pounds as he escapes, pedaling the bike through the wilderness with the baby in his care. And at the conclusion of the book – sadness? hope? An ambiguous ending leaves me thinking about the novel for