Dystopia And Modern Society In The Giver By Lois Lowry

Imagine living in a community where one person is chosen to hold all of the world´s memories. Being alone, afraid and separate. Jonas has been through all of these emotions as the Receiver. Jonas's assignment to be the Receiver of Memory is a punishment. Jonas has to receive painful and harsh memories from the Giver, that no one else has to have. Jonas feels different from his friends, and realizes that he is not the same as everyone else. Jonas is learning more things about what the world is really like, and is realizing that his training will be more painful than what he thought.

Utopian (N) an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect. The key word there is ‘imagined’ as we haved learned in The Giver that not everything can be perfect; it 's just limiting the being of a human. By having such limitations, the people can’t hold their memories, can’t see color, and the government chooses their family. Jonas’s society is vastly different than ours in various ways.

“You were put on this earth to achieve your greatest self, to live out your purpose and to do it courageously.” This quote by Dr. Steve Maraboli states that life has a purpose that you have to reach out to. The objects in life are growth and the discovery of new things, and that can’t happen unless you push your limitations. The main character, Jonas, in Lois Lowry’s The Giver goes through a similar encounter when he is specially selected as the Receiver of Memories for his community. With his assignment as the Receiver, Jonas begins to see his community differently and its absence in color, feeling, and choices. In order to live your life, you have to uncover new things, and when that happens, it will open a door for more things to discover.

Options and choices are the best part of life. Choosing and making decisions is a part of becoming more independent and having freedom. But what if there was a restriction on family, the job one could have, or the memories one could make. In The Giver, Jonas’s society has no decisions, no choosing, or picking. Is this the idea of a Utopia where people take all the responsibility of making all of life's hard decisions? Or a Dystopia of having no freedom to make any choices or having a say? The three main differences between Jonas’s society are family, memories, and assignments.

Everyone fears to live in a dystopian world. A dystopia is an imperfect world where everything is unfortunate and disastrous. Many people argue that the community in the book The Giver by Lois Lowry is an example of a utopia, which is a perfect world. But all of those people don’t seem to see all the negative things that the society of The Giver includes. Looking at the correct side of the argument it is very clear that the community is a dystopia. Characters aren’t allowed to feel emotions, they have no freedom, and they aren’t treated fairly.

What would life be like without empathy, diversity and memories? Life would be much like The Giver Community. The Giver is about a boy named Jonas who lives in a community that takes place in the future. This community believes in Sameness. Sameness has taken away values such as empathy, diversity, and memories for a peaceful, stable community. This community selected Jonas and the Giver to make decisions based on the memories of the past, before Sameness. Now no one but the Giver and Jonas know true values and emotions such as empathy, diversity, and memories but Jonas is determined to change that.Empathy, diversity and memories would have been important to create a positive community.

“‘[Jonas’s society] relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences.’ He thought for a moment. ‘We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others’” (Lowry 95). In order to make everything have sameness, Jonas’s society had to get rid of many, many beautiful works of art. Although modern society has some similarities with The Giver’s society, the differences in feelings, choices, and individuality are what make The Giver’s society truly a dystopia.

Imagine a world where everything seems perfect but truly it is not as pleasant as it appears. In The Giver by Lois Lowry shows us a community in the future with no feelings at all. Jonas a twelve year old boy knows his life as it is and one evening he learns the truth about the community. Jonas set’s off into a adventure to change it all. Character,conflict,and symbolism makes the reader see thru the eyes of a twelve year old in a place of slavery disguised without anyone knowing it.

Imagine a community with no color, no feelings, no choices, no love. In that community there is one boy with all of those things. Jonas sees the world, emotionless, blank. He wants to change it. The community chose Jonas to be the Receiver. The most important assignment in the community. He must receive memories from the current receiver. The chief elder made the decision to make only one person bear the burden of the memories. Everyone thinks the community is perfect, a utopia, but Jonas sees all the flaws .Jonas changes throughout The Giver and as a result, tries to change the community.

An unknown person once said, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” This quote is important when it comes to general organization, but what about the organization of a society? Should every element of humanity be controlled? This is the situation for Jonas’ community in The Giver. This utopian society is a solution for many problems in the world. Living in the Utopian society of Lois Lowry's The Giver would be superior to where humanity exists in the universe today because it is safer, citizens do not have to face the problems of negative interactions with each other, and there is Climate Control to prevent disasters.

Jonas, a 12 year old kid, who grew up in a community with no color, uniqueness or feelings discovers these things as he gets memories through the Giver. In The Giver by Lois Lowry, Jonas becomes the new receiver and he gains memories of the past and of things he never knew existed. Jonas eventually decides that he wants to leave the community after he notices everything that 's wrong with his utopia. As Jonas leaves the community, discovering his newly found knowledge, he learns that taking risks help growth and love truly conquers all.

There is no doubt the society in The Giver contrasts our own, however the similarities between the two might be startling. The dystopian environment in the Giver can be a humbling thought for how good we have it in our life. Following that trend, we are alo forced to look at the horrifying similarities between these two societies. As we look at The Giver’s rules, family, and leadership we see the vast differences and also the shocking familiarities.

Jonas’s world is a utopia compared to our dystopia, but in Jonas’s world went to a dystopia, both our worlds have differences like how Jonas’s world has sameness everything is the same. But in my world everything different it 's not the same like Jonas’s world. In Jonas’s world has laws like our but his is more harsh than ours. Like if there are twins, one is released(death) but in our world if we have twins are really cool in our world. Both are worlds are different in comparison.

In Lois Lowry 's The Giver Lowry explores the idea of sameness. In the community of The Giver anything different is deemed rude. This type of utopia ensures that there is no hierarchy, no poverty, and no “bad” decisions. Utopia like this can often turn into a kingdom, but in the community of The Giver the system that is in place makes sure that this never happens works very well.

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.” (Lowry 154) The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is set in a dystopian society in an unspecified time where love, pain, war, greed, jealousy, etc have been abolished and are gone from the society. The only way to see these bad human emotions is to be the Giver or Receiver of Memory. The Giver has every memory from humans before their dystopian society was created. The Receiver of Memory slowly receives the memories over their training. The Giver’s society is run by a small group of Elders. They have tried to abolish individuality and freedom. They also find worlds outside of theirs to be bad or dangerous. The Giver’s dystopian society, set in an unspecified time and place, has abolished the bad ideals and actions of humans, which has turned the humans living there into products of the Elders running it, free of love, faith, and free-will that causes the society’s methods to fail.