The Giver Character Analysis

Jonas is the protagonist of the novel and a third-person narrator tells the entire story from Jonas perception of things. He is intelligent, curious, caring, and his thought process is very mature for being 11-13 years old. A good quote portraying both his matureness and his intellect is “If everything's the same, then there aren't any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things”(97). This is also one of the first signs that he is displeased with the community. Another quote showing his courage and curiosity is "It hurt a lot," Jonas said, "but I'm glad you gave it to me. It was interesting. And now I understand better. What it meant, that there would be

     This book is about a boy names Jonas. Jonas lives in a futuristic society where there is no pain, fear, war, and hatred. There is also no prejudice, since everyone looks and acts basically the same, there is very little competition. They have also eliminated choice.

Jonas is very mature at the beginning of the novel. For example, he volunteers at many places, plays games, goes to school every day, shares his dreams and feelings, and most importantly follows the rules.

Change is inevitable no matter what difference is made. The Giver by author Lois Lowry is the story of a utopian community that has adopted sameness that actually seems more dystopian later on. The Giver’s protagonist is a boy, Jonas, who is chosen and honored to take the assignment of being the Receiver of Memories. Jonas as the new Receiver of Memories is trained by the previous Receiver of Memories who Jonas calls The Giver. This causes many joys and pains for Jonas, but a curiousness to every new memory that is given. The setting is set in a community that has gained the culture to be a strict community that is controlled by The Elders. Before meeting the Giver, Jonas began as an outcast,later as he met his mentor Jonas was brave, and as he became more mature he became determined.

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:

What is The Giver you may ask? The Giver is a 1993 American young adult dystopian novel by Lois Lowry. The Giver takes place in an advanced society which seems to be a utopian but ends up being a dystopian as the story ends. There's a 12-year-old boy named Jonas. Their communities eliminated pain and strife by converting everyone to become so called “equal", they also removed emotional feelings like love. Jonas is selected to become the Receiver of Memory which is the person who stores all the past memories of the time before everyone was equal. There may be times where one must receive the wisdom gained from history to help the community's decision making. Jonas has trouble with concepts of all the new emotions and things introduced to him:

Jonas starts out with a very low understanding of what it means to be mature. He has no knowledge of pain, love, or any other emotion. He proves this by acting like a normal child. He plays with his friends after volunteer hours. He attends school on a regular basis. Jonas is a stickler for the rules. He has been told that it is wrong to not follow rules and that there

Lord, Elyse. "Overview of The Giver." Novels for Students. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2016. Elyse Lord is one of the many critics who describe “The Giver” as terrifying but offering “hope and a constructive view” of the Utopian world in the book. She explains that other critics praise the book with many awards such as the Newberry Medal. Lord goes on to reason that the story is favored by different readers for its complexity, symbolism, metaphors, ambiguous ending, and can be compared similarly to classic science fiction like “Brave New World” and “Fahrenheit 451.” Contradicting this statement, Lord says that ‘librarians’, ‘educators’, and ‘students’ debate “The Giver” to be censored from public schools around the world because of its graphic scenes and ideas of infanticide and euthanasia. This includes the time Jonas witnessed his father murder a baby and throw it down a trash chute in cold blood. This is ironical compared to the language, emotion, and behaviors being censored in Jonas’s ‘Utopian’ society. Lord argues this through Anna Cerbasi of Port Saint Lucie, Florida, who asked the school board to remove a book that was about a family murdering their child for crying at night and called the book inappropriate for the sixth grade. Lord raises the question of who is to “decide which books are appropriate for which children,” and argues that it cannot be answered with not one but the many books integrated in school curricula that compose

Winning doesnt show someones true character, what you do after the loss is what defines someone. Jonas faced many conflicts and what he did afterward is what showed us, the readers who he really was. After the problems jonas became a more angry with the society, rebellious, and smart person who who cared about the rest and wanted to make a difference and help the community be a better place without the people as much as they were.

In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the biggest flaw in Jonas’s community is their awful idea of hiding the past from the citizens to create an unreasonable world with no disappointments. They almost never admit that a mistake had been made, and they wiped away memories of the past, like war.

In the novel, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, the topic of life occurs throughout the story. Jonas lives in a community based on conformity and sameness. Jonas is chosen as the receiver of memory. As he is trained he learns that change is needed in the community. At the end of the book, Jonas tries to go elsewhere to return the memories back to the community. In The Giver, the author uses the characters, plot, and conflict to develop the theme that life can not be taken for granted.

In the Giver the community has many weirdly spoken words. These words can mean many things, but to the community these words are nothing out of the ordinary. Everyone there is used to hearing these words and is not startled by them. In the real world an average person would have no idea what some of these words mean. For example Stirrings, comfort object, and Nurturer. In these strange peoples' community these are everyday words, but to ordinary people, they are very odd. Stirrings is very serious in the community, so is being a Nurturer. Every living child in the community is given a comfort item until the age of eight. Although, having a comfort item is not that unusual like the other two words, most children have items they go to sleep with every night. These three words from the book are routine words to the community.

In The Giver their life is different from our life. The book and the movie are similar because the community takes the morning medication for their stirrings. The community also don't see color. The book and the movie are different because Asher is a drone pilot. It includes Jonas kissing Fiona. There is a variety of diffrences and similarities between the movie and the book “ The Giver ”.

In the beginning of the novel, Jonas has a low maturity level and he does not understand what is going on in his community. He volunteers at many places, he doesn’t know what job he wants. He also plays games because he is young. He goes to school, which means he isn’t twelve years old yet. In the mornings he shares his feelings and dreams, he doesn’t think it is strange at all. He follows the rules as well, he doesn’t think that they are too stern yet.

Imagine a world without love or color. Jonas the protagonist in The Giver he ran away and left comparing his community to our society. In our society we aloud to love whoever we want and we free to love. In jonas society love is a word that is prohibited no longer said for example abandoned no longer mentioned because they don't know what it means.