preview

The Giver Analysis

Decent Essays

The main theme shown in The Giver is the idea that good cannot exist without evil, and evil cannot exist without good, thus making reaching a perfect society impossible. It does not matter how amazing an experience is, unless you have something bad to compare it with you can never taste the true meaning of that moment. The members of Jonas’s community cannot appreciate the joys in their lives because they have never felt sadness. Correspondingly, they also do not feel grief because they have never appreciated the true wonders of life. Throughout the novel, Lois Lowry uses multiple literary devices to conjure these thoughts into the readers mind.
When Jonas is chosen to take the role of Receiver of Memories, he starts to learn how life …show more content…

Where there is war, there is the blasphemy known as death. When loved ones meet death, it causes a lot of grief and sadness, in this thinking people took away the emotion of love to become emotionally detached to other things, and then the loss would not be so devastating. When the community also got rid of color, they also disposed of problems, such discrimination over reasons such as skin color. A world is definitely not perfect with wars, segregation, and grieving; but it is just as flawed without the magnificence of color and deep feelings such as love, causing world-wide perfection to be impossible.
Jonas learns that his community, although it may seem perfect at first, it is lacking many of the key things that make life special and worthwhile. When pain, hate, and grief are taken away, along with them disappear snow, color, and love. For without evil, you cannot have good. When negative things are eliminated, something wonderful is sacrificed along with it, causing a perfect life to be impossible to achieve.

Works Cited

Wikipedia contributors. "The Giver." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 12 Dec 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver>.
Sparknotes contributors. "The Giver." SparkNotes. 12 Dec 2012. <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/giver/themes.html>.
Shmoop contributors. "The Giver." Shmoop, We Speak Student. 12 Dec 2012.

Get Access