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A Dystopian Life In Lois Lowry's The Giver

737 Words3 Pages

Lois Lowry’s “The Giver” depicts the living in a futuristic society that has eliminated warfare, hunger, agony, pain and has been converted to “Sameness”-a world of monotony. This novel fits into a larger genre called dystopian literature. It is set in a society which appears as a utopian society but as we progress it is revealed to be a dystopian one. At the age of 12 every member of the community used to be selected by the Committee of Elders for a particular assignment based on their aptitudes and skills.The children are born to Birthmothers, who never parent their children, and spend their first year in a Nurturing Centre and the flawed children are released from the society. When their children grow up, family units disintegrate and dissolve and the parents have to lead their lives as childless adults …show more content…

Since Jonas lives in a community where each person’s choice is restricted, their development is stunted in many ways in the name of stability and predictability. This novel has also depicted the relationship between memory and wisdom because as we reach towards the end, Jonas has well understood what will benefit and what will hamper the stability of the community and that has come through by his discussion of these memories with the Giver. Jonas here serves as an intermediary with the humanity, who is supposed to deliver this newfound knowledge of memories to the other people. This aspect can be closely related to prophecy in religion. Besides that, the writer has managed to invoke retrospection in the readers which relates to the social balance and the systemic alignment of a person’s vocation to their persona which eliminates; to an extent, their susceptibility to sentimentality when it comes to perception. These aspects of the novel offer a comprehensive undercurrent which makes this book an enjoyable and replenishing

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