Too Much Sacrifice in The Giver by Lois Lowry

In the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry, the receivers are the only people who have feelings and memories. The elders are the people who choose what the best is for their people in the community and sometimes they go to the receiver for help on making the right decisions. The people from the community do not see color, or have freedom on making a decision for them. There is no love, feelings, and grandparents. Jonas is assigned to be the next receiver of the community; He was trained by the giver, who transfers memories of the pain and pleasures of life, who also shows him the truth and reality that is hidden to the community. Jonas’s community does not represent the ideal of society because there are no choices or distinctions between men

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.

The setting of The Giver takes place in a fictional community known as the “Sameness”. Life here is supposed to be "perfect" because there is no pain or suffering. They don’t have to take

First of all, I believe The Giver is a dystopia because you have no choices. In document E it states,” If everything’s the same, then there aren’t any choices!” This is significant because in Jonas’s society you have no choices. In document F it states that,” And Gabriel? For Gabriel there would have been no life at all. So there had not really been a choice.” This is significant because if Jonas stayed in the community Gabriel would have died and Jonas could not live with that.

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.

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.

The Giver strives to be a utopian society but the still can’t be perfect. The Giver is a book with the main character being Jonas, Jonas has no last name; however, no one else had the last name in their society. The Giver is a Dystopian because they get their memories erased, they are all equal, and they get assigned jobs when they are 12.

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.

Lois Lowry the ,author of this book,“The Giver” wrote this book for many different reasons. One of them may be because she wants to warn the readers that if, the world keep going as we know it we might all die. In addition , that if we don’t consider that the stuff we have and the choices that we have are actually privileges we might get them taken away without having much of option to protest against it. However, in Jonas community they don’t have options also, what Lois Lowry also might be saying is that what if having no choices is might be good for us. Imagine not having to worry about paying for gas for a car because, the way everyone gets around is on a bike.

President Ronald Reagan once said that,”Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in our bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and passed down for them to do the same.” President Reagan would have been miserable living in the world as it is portrayed in “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. In the book there has been a utopian community built for people so that they have no freedom and no individual thoughts. Everyone is exactly the same. Everyone takes a daily pill which eliminates any memories, pain or stress. The protagonist named Jonas is chosen to receive all the worlds memories and figures out that everyone he loves has no feelings or independence. He decides to risk everything

The Giver by Lois Lowry is a Utopia because no one is ever starving, no one really feels pain, and they can’t choose wrong. Throughout our world I have seen many people on the sides of streets having no food, no home, and no family with no one helping them to have a better life. I have also seen people helping the homeless and shelters but in this book they don’t need to do that because everybody already has a home and food. Plus they don’t have to ask for money and food, they already have it.

The Giver shows us that love is an essential part to this world. The Giver shows Jonas the memory of pain and suffering and reacted in a way that made him upset, expressing love to Jonas as well as regret. Jonas was “no longer enjoying the freedom but instead, terrified…”(137). The Giver knows what Jonas is experiencing and regrets it although it is what he is told to do. The Giver took a liking to Jonas but couldn’t bare to watch him in pain. Jonas sacrificed his own comfort so the Giver could be relieved of these memories for himself. These same memories were given to the Giver because it was his job. The Giver of each generation feels love toward the new Receiver because the Giver knows what pain is like. Love is essential in this moment, especially for Jonas, because he needs a person to help him to start a new, more utopian society. People show love by sacrificing themselves for