The Giver A Dystopian Analysis

The Giver is a world renowned book but a large portion people do not know of it’s impact on dystopian literature. The Giver was written in 1993 and won the John Newbery prize. The story itself is about a boy named Jonas living in a dystopian society. The Giver is impacting the genre of dystopias by igniting the rise of Dystopian novels. The Giver achieved this with it’s appeal and popularity. Evidence proving these facts are the dystopian novels publicated after The Giver. The appeal of The Giver contributed to the impact on dystopian literature greatly.

To me a utopia cannot be achieved, a utopia would be “perfect world” where everyone is satisfied. A dystopia can be very far from perfect, as it is in The Giver. The world in The Giver by Lois Lowry is a dystopia because no world anywhere can ever be perfect, the people who live there will never be truly happy and because without choice life can be very boring, as it is in The Giver.

Jonas’ community appears to be a utopia, but, in reality, it is a dystopia. The people seem perfectly content to live in an isolated wreck—in a government run by a select few—in which a group of Elders enforces the rules. In Jonas’ community, there is no poverty, starvation, unemployment, lack of housing, or discrimination; everything is perfectly planned to eliminate any problems. However, as the book progresses and Jonas gains insight into what the people have willingly given up—their freedoms and individualities—for the so-called common good of the community, it becomes more and more obvious that the community is a horrible place in which to live. You as a reader can relate to the disbelief and horror that Jonas feels when he realizes

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

Jonas discovers what is really beyond his community, beyond all the rules and policies they have to follow; he decides to leave and give all of his memories to the rest of the community so they would know about what they have not seen or experienced before. Jonas discovers that the community has decided too many things for everyone. He realizes Sameness is not right, that it cannot last any longer. He thinks of all the what-ifs. What if the Elders choose a wrong spouse? What if the Elders choose the wrong job for someone?

Throughout the novel Giver, Jonas was questioning his society and community. Jonas accepting his society because he's unaware of the emotions of the other people in his community. Jonas starts to question his community when Jonas starts to feel emotions from getting memories. Jonas became to reject his society because he finds out what his community actually is. In the beginning of the novel, Jonas accepts his society's rules but once he starts to feel the memories of the past Jonas questions, and if they purposely took that out for the rest of the community.

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.

Jonas is feeling things that no one in his community has ever felt before. He is beginning to understand that others are missing out on important emotions. He knows that The Giver has already given away most of the memories, and in order to stop the process, he must make a sacrifice in order for his community to be aware of what they are missing. This proves that he is conscious of the fact that his community is not perfect, and the act of staging an accident is a noble, selfless thing to do; something that his perfect peers would not understand. When talking about the harms of banning books and by quoting Lois Lowry, Jennifer Kendall states, “The world portrayed in The Giver is a world where choice has been taken away. It is a frightening world” (Kendall). Kendall makes the point that the Utopian society is not something that people strive for. As a middle-schooled child, it is easy to see that life is not perfect. I feel as if Lowry does a great job in showing the reader that Jonas does understand that his community is not perfect, and he goes to great links to stop the perfection. While there may seem to

Everyone is burden with pain. No one can escape emotional, physical or mental misery because it is part of what makes us human. Without pain we would live in a world of sameness. Although there is no way we can escape this reality, what if there existed a utopian society in which everyone could live peacefully without the burden of pain? Would everyone be better off or would living in ignorance be a burden for someone else? Lois Lowry gives us a glimpse into what life would be like in a world where conflict does not exist and shows us what this type of world would do to our humanity. In The Giver, she introduces us to Jonas, an eleven-year-old boy who starts off as an oblivious member of his

One reason why Jonas hates this community is because of the rules. If you make one small mistake, you can get in serious trouble, also known as being released (killed). “ When an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice….Needless to say, he will be released.” (pg. 13) This suggests that the rules in the society can have a major impact on someone if they make just a slight error. The fact that the person did not follow the directions well enough and got killed is appalling. These unpleasant and ridiculous rules support a dystopian novel because they show how unpleasant living in this community can be.

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.

In Jonas society, nobody knows any information about anything. The elders, who are in the Giver’s community, believe that no community members except for them and the Receiver of memory should know all the information. Even in the beginning of the training, Jonas thought that he had to protect people from wrong choices. But, the Giver agreed that it was safer. Jonas was getting mad about how the memories couldn't be shared with everyone, so he decided to run away on his bike with Gabe. They decided to make a plan to leave. The Receiver and Gabe left the community together. Life is full of color, even though life was remained in this society, it was not colorful. All the bad days and good days were very valuable to

"All knowledge hurts." — Cassandra Clare (City of Bones, The Mortal Instruments, #1) Knowledge may hurt, if the truth is discovered, but the knowledge and truth can give wisdom among other traits, but in the novel, The Giver wisdom gives honor. Knowledge can also change the way one may feel towards something. The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is a novel which portrays the notion that knowledge can change someone's opinion. Knowledge may change your likes, dislikes, and fears.

The novel, “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, will make readers experience a range of emotions . This story contains many unique ideas and makes you think about the society that Jonas lives in. 12-year old Jonas lives in a dystopian disguised as a utopia. When Jonas is chosen as the new “Receiver of Memories”, he starts to understand the true reality of his world. Jonas’s character keeps you intrigued since you can slowly see his character develop as he starts to really see.

There have been plenty of novels that have changed me, such as Orwell’s 1984 or Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 but there has been one novel that has stood out in front of the many legendary classics and that was Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver. As a feature of this Youth Conference, I’ll be clarifying why The Giver has had such an impact on me and changed the way I view the world.