The Giver Utopia

Also they will never experience the weather and nature and so many other things that we have in our world that make us so happy and so in love. Without these things this will most likely make the people who live in the community very depressed and sad. This is shown here when Jonas experiences true happiness, love and family, “ ‘What did you perceive?’ The Giver asked. ‘Warmth,’ Jonás replied, ‘and happiness. And-let me think. Family. That it was a celebration of some sort, a holiday. And something else — I can’t quite get the word for it’... ‘They were called Grandparents’ ”(Lowry 123). In this moment Jonas experiences warmth, family and love. He sees the new true meaning of happiness because he is able to compare it to the pain and loss he went through before. Mostly all of the people who live in The Giver community cannot experience happiness like this. They can not compare the happiness and warmth they (don’t) experience to the pain and loss that they (don’t) experience.

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?

A true utopia requires sacrifices many people cannot condone. This fact has been shown throughout The Giver. The community decides to sacrifice many things to come to Sameness. Pain, individuality and love are among many things that they have sacrificed (Lowry 124). These sacrifices made the community Jonas lived in seemingly perfect; there is no hunger, no war, no pain, no one will ever be alone. But, a perfect community is completely unrealistic. That is why they have The Giver, the person that knows all the imperfections of the society and help the society to achieve perfection.

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.

First, The Giver’s community is a dystopia because there is limited freedom. I know this because in the Document E it says, “Oh,” Jonas was silent for a minute. “Oh, I

Individuality is one of the key components of reaching the utopian standard. However, in The Giver, the community rejects the idea of individuality and instead focuses on developing Sameness, therefore initiating a form of control by allowing them to not express their own personality to shine, and alternately forcing them to contort into these soft putty-shaped beings with zero individuality at all. Conversations between Jonas and The Giver that occur throughout the novel informs the audience that the community lacks a sense of uniqueness and results in an absence of options to choose from.

Imagine living in a world with no change : same clothing, same weather every day, same haircut, same birthday as everyone else, and you don’t get to pick your job or spouse. How would that feel? Well, that's the point this society doesn’t feel. Jonas is the main character of the book The Giver by Lois Lowry and he lives in a utopia community. Jonas knows no different though, he was born into this society, but one day, everything changes for Jonas. Jonas changes throughout The Giver and as a result, tries to change the Community.

A utopian society is to be though of perfect or idealistic. The charcters in the book have no feelings, no choices, and no memories other thhan their own life. The Giver and Jonas are the only two with memories since their job is to be the holder of them and Jonas stops taking his medication to no longer interfearing with his body that gives him feelings. All others do not have any emotional attachments. The community decides all of your life’s plan. They choose your spose, your career, and you are not able to have your own children. If you want children you have to apply and a child will be given to you if you are accepted. The Giver and Jonas are the only ones with memories from the past that go back hundreds before the community was a utopian societ and other communities and how they live. The only memories the people in the community are allowed to have are their own lives but thneir lives are controlled by the committee of elders. This give the people of the community teh benefit of never feeling pain but they have no freedom which is almost as if they live in a comunity with a dictatorship.

Have you ever imagined a community where there is no color, no emotions, no individuality, the government make decisions for you and everything is the same? That what it's in Jonas' community when they started sameness, there no color, everything was the same and citizens of the community had no rights, an exemplification of having rights in the community is , everyone in the community cannot choose their spouse. As a result, sameness, what Utopian society Jonas lives in is based on, has no real benefits to the community because there are no emotions, no individuality and no choices.

How would it feel if this world didn’t let people have choices, didn’t let people share, or if they didn’t let people celebrate birthdays, holidays, or just celebrate anything? Well that’s what it was like for Jonas in The Giver. Jonas lives in the future in a community where The Giver is the only one who knows everything, but soon all that changed for Jonas. He became the the community 's new Receiver of Memory, and soon Jonas learns the terrible secrets of this “utopian” community. Later on as he learns some more about the community’s secrets he makes a plan to leave the community, and to take Gabe with him so he wouldn’t get released.(which means they die, but the community doesn’t understand that) In this book choices, sharing, and celebrations would have made The Giver community more positive.

Mankind has spent a millennium finding a way to a utopia, of that millennia they only found themselves in a dystopia. The Giver reveals the reality of mankind’s inclination of a dystopia as Jonas, the main protagonist of The Giver, uncovers his city’s darkest secrets in “preserving” the perfect world. The Giver takes place in a world where human individuality is believed as an imperfect quality. Things like “precision of language and “sameness” are the values citizens believe are right. Humans are “programmed” to eliminate the important human values like love, anger, and happiness the people today cherish. The citizens are like robots, prioritised with blankness until they are nothing but heartless droids of layers of heartless programming and machinery. Jonas is given one of the community’s

You could argue that this book is a dystopia because they aren’t free and can’t make their own choice but the problem is a lot of the time we choose wrong and it affects our whole life. For example, what happens if someone choose to not go to college and end up working at a fast food restaurant for half of their life. Then they can’t support their family if they were even lucky enough to have one without a descent job and they could end up going to college when their 40 or 50 trying to get a descent job. Be honest though no one wants to do that. In Jonas’s community people watch over other people and assign what they think is the right job for them for the rest of their lives and not have to worry about putting food on the table