The Giver: Life In The Dystopian Society

“Life here is so orderly, so predictable-so painless. It's what they've chosen” (Lowry 103). Imagine a world with no control over who you marry, what your job is, what you wear, or what you get to eat for every meal. This is what it’s like in The Giver by Lois Lowry. The people live in a community that is severely more controlled than ours. We have the freedom to have a pet, have as many kids as you want, and say what you want. The people in The Giver do not have those freedoms. The people in the community don’t even know what love is. In our world love is each individual’s choice, but not in The Giver. In other words, they don’t get to experience the precious parts of life, such has having a wedding and giving birth to your child. No society is perfect, but citizens of every community have an

“’Memories are forever”’ (Lowry). People make new memories every day without even realizing it. Some good some bad, that’s just the way of life, but in The Giver nobody knows what happened before them. People barley remember what their childhood was like, they don’t understand the importance of memory and that memories are forever. Aspects of life, rules, and prosperities between our world and Jonas’ world are very different yet have some similarities. Things that are crucial to the characters in The Giver are not as meaningful to the people in our world.

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

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?

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.

To most kids in our society, the changes in Jonas’s world would be difficult to accept because we in America value our freedom to choose and to voice our desires. Did the creator’s of Jonas’s community truly improve society as we know it today?

The story is about a boy named Jonas. Jonas lives in a community where everything is perfect, everything is the same and no one is allowed to brake the rules imposed by the Elders. The Elders are in charge of creating all the rules and basically ruled everyone’s lives.

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.

The Giver is a story about a city that is cut off from all memories from the past and is strictly controlled by the government or the so-called “Elders”. There is only one person in the community called the “Receiver of Memory” who has the role of holding all the memories of the past and giving advice to the government when they need it. When Jonas gets chosen for the Receiver of Memory position, he realizes that there is and was much more to this world than the people in the community know about. Jonas soon starts to see colors(which only the person who had the memories could see) and comes to the conclusion that the other people need to know about and have the memories. He goes to the Giver(the person who gives Jonas the memories) and asked him for a way he could return all the memories to the citizens. The Giver said he was proud of the courage that Jonas had; that he was proud he had the courage to rebel against the government to get what he thinks is right. The Giver gives Jonas more memories of courage so that he will be able to survive through the harsh conditions outside the city. Jonas goes to the outside of the city and is faced by many harsh conditions and also troops from the government. But he doesn’t give up. He has the courage to get what he wants. In the end, Jonas makes it to the Boundary of Memory and releases all the memories to every citizen in the city. Therefore, courage can be

Moving towards the ending of the story, Jonas asks The Giver about the previous Receiver of Memory which then allowed him to know more about previous receiver and her pain which was unfortunately, loss. “” But I gave her loneliness. And gave her loss. I transferred the memory of a child taken away from its parents.”

This is an example of Jonas receiving the power to lie. Another quote shows Jonas talking about the power of the Committee of Elders. He says,” Every aspect of one’s life is decided by the committee”(52). The committee is given the power to control and take over one’s entire life. They control who marries who and who does what.

7. The rules for Jonas don’t apply as much, like the lying doesn’t apply. Also Jonas can’t apply for a release, or can’t be telling people what he had learned from the Giver. So Jonas can lie so that he can cover up what he is learning.

The giver is a great novel, but the giver is not a society that someone would want to live upon. Even better yet, make anyone live in. Not even

Anthem is a book about a golden age society. Most of the time that means that it is a dystopian book. But this society is not destroyed by the people. It is a good city that has been transported to the old west sort of. They don't have any electricity so they have to use torches and candles for lights. They have a council of scholars that does all of the inventions for the world because every city is the same. Every one is the same. They are not allowed to look at themselves and they can not say the unspeakable word. It is I, if they say this word they are punished by death from the council of scholars. I is an independent word. Therefore they are speaking about themselves and they are not allowed to think about themselves. they can only think

Throughout the years of cinematic history, there have been countless of movie adaptions of people’s favorite books. Some have been well received and loved by the viewers. While other adaptions strayed too far from the book or just weren’t on par with their novel counterpart. The Giver, a critically acclaimed novel and receiver of the John Newbery Medal was set for its movie adaptation to be released in late 2014. This left fans anticipating the film and the possible changes the director would make in order to adapt the novel to the big screen. With the release of the movie, viewers were able to see what exactly was changed in the movie and whether it worked out for the better or worse. Three major changes to the storyline being the change