The Giver By Lois Lowry

The Giver is written from the point of view of Jonas. At the beginning of the book Jonas is an eleven-year-old boy living in a futuristic society that got rid of all sorrow, pain, fear, hate and war. Everyone looks and acts almost the same. Everyone is polite and there is no competition. Also the community is not allowed any kind of choices from the moment they were born to the moment they are released. For example, at the age of nine you are given a bike and are not allowed to ride a bike before that age. Also at the age of

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

The Giver shows the ideology of a dystopian theme as it has the citizens being controlled by the authority. Members of the community are being watched by The Community so that they will not perform anything that hurts the population. For example, “”you know that there’s no third-chance”. The rules say that if there is a third transgression, he simply has to be released.” is quote said Jonas’s mother while sharing her experience that day. In this quote The Community is empowered and regulates every community member to be the way they want them to be; perfect. “Attention. A reminder Stirrings must be reported in order for treatment to take place. “”Jonas you HAVE to take your pills!””is another quote in The Giver. In this quote both the Community

Accordingly to the community in The Giver, citizens have lost their diversity which prevents being same.Riding the same bikes,wearing the same clothes,and speaking the same language,even the same words, can’t be acceptable for our world.In this community,no one has a private life,no one has a right to lie,and even all the doors are unlocked except The Giver’s door.In the beginning of the novel,the reader influences about the perfection of the community,but throughout the story,Lowry shows that the community which is based on Perfection is not perfect at all.Actually,it’s a community which is based on strict rules just to prevent people from feelings,colors,and all the values which a human must have tasted at least once during their life times.Diversity is a very important value for humans,and a community can’t be perfect without it.

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.

The Giver describes a society in search of perfection, which is a recurring theme in literature. Somebody in Jonas’s society decided that eliminating or limiting choices and feeling, among other things, would ultimately create a perfect place in which to live. By eliminating and/or limiting choices and feelings, the creators were able to implement Sameness, which would then provide a conflict-less environment in which to exist.

Jonas is just another member of his community. He spends his life following the rules that his community has imposed him. In all his life, he has blindly followed the rules and has never questioned them. For that reason, it comes to a shock when he receives new instructions that go against everything he has been taught:

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

In the novel, The Giver, the author Lois Lowry presents a community where choices are limited to what the community leaders allow. The author believes that control over choices can secure one’s safety and allow the individual to be content with their situation. Some individuals will revolt against the community in an attempt to gain something better.

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.

While The Giver has many themes, or the underlying message, one that stood out was the importance of freedom of choice. In the suppressive society that the book sets in, they lacked any and all choices that we have as a birthright. Freedom of choice is something that we don’t normally think about since it has come natural to us. The book, however, gives us a community that not only suppresses the freedom of choice but also lies to its people so they don’t know any different.

Through our society we are all raised up to be independent and unique individuals such as being ourselves and expressing who each of us are to the world. However, in the book The Giver by Lois Lowry, everyone is raised to count on one another and everyone must look and act the same. Our society differs from Jonas’s in many ways, such as the family units, birthdays, and the way we each learn about our past.

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.

The giver is a fictional novel authorised by Louis Lowry dedicated to informing readers about the devastating impact of extreme conformity on a community. As we progress throughout the book we start to realise and learn all these new things about the giver's community, such as creating and trying to maintain a perfect community, that comes beyond our abilities, while the givers society is having a huge impact on the individuality and individual choices on the members of the community. We learn that the inhabitants of the society had a hard time handling all the different memories, in a sudden event. All hints and evidence to these statements above are hidden and presented throughout the book.

The Marxist criticism is based on the socialist theories of Karl Marx and how the readers must closely examine the dynamics of class as they attempt to understand the works they read. In a world where there is no pain, no prejudice, no emotion, and no detestation. Lois Lowry gives a vivid description of a community where everything is equal, everyone is just as important as another, and life choices are made by only one individual. In the book The giver by Lois Lowry, it expresses the exact opposite of Marx’s most important ideas which is a prime example of what people will do if they were forced to live a certain way.