The Giver: A Short Story

Jonas finally reached the summit of the hill. Feeling the warmth of happiness to have the feeling of being so close, he continued on strong and excited again. His family unit, friends, and Giver came to mind.

“Okay.” Jonas replied, thinking that atleast he will be with the one he loves when he finds out about the death of a loved one.

In The Giver, Jonas’ world is turned upside down when he is chosen to be the next receiver of his community. The ceremony of twelves is the last ceremony of the day. Jonas waited anxiously for his name to be called; he never hears it. The chief elder has made a mistake. Jonas now has to learn that everything he has been taught was not always the same and it ages him years.

Jonas was coming in for his first meeting with the Receiver of Memory. He was nervous at first, but then went inside of the first door. The secretary let Jonas in. Jonas was surprised by the locks on the door, but when the secretary explained it was to help keep the old Receiver of Memory concentrated, he felt relaxed.

The sled slowed as they reached the bottom of the hill. Jonas stood up trying to get to the house that was straight ahead of him. It took all his strength to keep walking. He was so bitterly cold he would have thought he was frozen. The only thing that kept him going was the thought that he could save Gabriel. Give him a life that he himself didn’t have. Each agonizing step he thought he would die ,but he made it to the house ,his only hope of survival. He transmitted his warmest memory to Gabriel with the only strength he had left. Jonas saw the door open as everything went dark.

The Giver is it a utopia or not? A community that has solved hunger, poverty, and weather , how could it not? The Giver by Lois Lowry makes you wonder this while reading it. The book is about a boy named Jonas who is chosen to become the new Receiver of memory.

Imagine living in a society where you have the freedom to do what you want. No one telling you how to live your life and you make your own choices. A democratic society allows for freedom of choice. Living in the democratic society with freedom is better than living in a utopian society because you get to do what you want, pick how you want to live and be free to express yourself.

Imagine living in a society where all emotion is suppressed and all knowledge of the outside world is not available to any person. How would that make a citizen feel? Well, of course they wouldn’t have the correct knowledge to understand how the feeling truly is, but those who are not ignorant would feel a starvation to know more about not only the outside world, but their own history. Within the novel The Giver, written by Lois Lowry, the reader is brought into a society where most emotions and knowledge are suppressed. As well as the fact that it isn’t very encouraged to have individuality.

Back at Jonas’s dwelling, Lily is excited about getting a bike, and Gabriel has learned how to walk. The Ceremony of Nine, when all the Nines get their bikes, is coming soon. It is almost December, almost a year since Jonas became the Receiver. Jonas’s father has to sleep early because the twins are being born tomorrow, and he has to decide which one to keep and which one to send to Elsewhere. Jonas asks his father if he actually takes it to Elsewhere. His father explains that he has to make a selection, weighs them, hands the larger one to a Nurturer standing by, and gets the smaller one “all cleaned up and comfy”. He then performs the Ceremony of Release. Jonas asks if someone from Elsewhere comes to get the baby. His father answers yes.

Through her Newbery award-winning novel, The Giver, Lois Lowry demonstrates the incalculable value of making decisions, by creating a dystopian society that does not know the meaning of choice. The ability to make choices is generally taken for granted in modern day society. Since the beginning of our society, people have pushed beyond the confines of not having choices by starting revolutions. During the 1700s, the American colonies led a revolution against the tyrannical mother country of Great Britain. Had the American colonists stayed submissive to British rule, the USA would not exist today. Another memorable instance occurred during the Roaring Twenties when strong-willed women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton declared

What if you lived in a community with no clue that your life was not as perfect as you thought? In Louis Lowry's The Giver, Jonas lives in what the community thinks is a Utopia but they haven't experienced the real world. His community is a Dystopia because of the lack of knowledge, sameness, and complete control.

Imagine your mind changes in seconds to not having feelings to feeling what real life is. A feeling that is filled with family, life, and emotion. Well, in the novel The Giver, written by Lois Lowry, Life was gone and the expert Chief elders, who watched after the community, shut out emotion, love, pain, and sadness. Jonas, the main character, who lives in a utopian society and is chosen to be the receiver of memory which is the job to hold all the memories of the past and is trained by The Giver. In his training he discovers that there is more to life than the one he is living in now. In the novel we learn the theme is that a life without emotion, love, and pain is no life worth living.

There were flashes everywhere. Each flash was directed towards Jonas and Gabe. The bright flashes made Jonas’s sleepy eyes glance up. He knew he reached Elsewhere but why didn’t anything happen? He thought that something magical was going to happen. But he didn’t feel any sensation. Then, sleep overtook Jonas and he fell to the ground, glimpsing at the vibrant shade of red on the sled.

The community had changed a great deal, since Jonas left. Where he had gone, no one knew, in fact many suggested a ceremony of loss for him, but it was never executed. There was no ceremony needed to remember Jonas, for he had given them something more. When the community first received the memories, there was chaos. They panicked at the fact that they now saw, and felt things that no amount of word precision could describe. Lily distinctly remembered the first time she witnessed a fantastic phenomenon the Giver called colors. All of a sudden, bright shades swooped over the room,reds and

uise knew by the new name on the call box that someone had moved in. She’d seen lights and movement in the apartment, which was across the courtyard from her and Martin, for the past few days. The new name confirmed it. Someone had finally bought the place. The name had been typed on a small piece of green paper and taped to the call box beside the apartment’s number. Louise had once known a man with the name Jahani. Arman had been a doctoral student in French the year she started at Stockholm University. He’d taught the conversation tutorial she took fall term. She looked at the green paper again. All that was so long ago. He was the second man she’d slept with. Martin still didn’t know about it. She checked her watch. She was on her way out