Compare And Contrast The Giver A Dystopian Society

“At dawn, the orderly, disciplined life he had always known would continue again, without him. The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without color, pain, or past.” (Lowry 165). In the book, The Giver by Lois Lowry, the protagonist’s life, Jonas lives in a orderly fashioned utopia that doesn’t allow crime, pain, feelings, love and memories. Though, when Jonas turns twelve, he receives a job along with the other twelves in the community, which is the Receiver of Memory. He is trained by the most respected one in the community, The Giver. When training with the Giver, he learns the world’s past, and the dark secrets beyond his community. Jonas thought that his community was this perfect, orderly utopia, but turns out it was just a brainwashed, robot-like dystopia. When comparing and contrasting today’s society and the society in The Giver, people would rather live in a non perfect, real world, instead of Jonas’s world, where it’s fake and full of uniformity. Despite the similarities between modern society and Jonas’s society, the differences in choice, freedom, and feelings make only Jonas’s society a true dystopia.

Anthem and The Giver are almost alike. In both the book and the movie, utopian societies are portrayed through idealistic systems and community framework. The Giver depicts a people of which past memory of human civilization and emotion does not exist. In addition, people living in this society can only view their surroundings in black and white. Jonas, the main character, is assigned as the Receiver of Memory. Through his lessons with The Giver, Jonas learns about past human society, and he begins to view his world with color. Society in the Anthem is also described as utopian. When children reach the age of five, they are placed in a hall called, Home of the Infants. These children then do not have contact with their parents as the state is responsible for their care. At the ages of five and fifteen, they become placed in Home of the Students and later in the Home of the Street Sweeper. As adults, they work to sweep the street. In this community system, individuals are not able to communicate with one another for friendship and developing theoretical and material innovations are nonexistent.

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.

Imagine a society without colors, where everything is the same everyday. In her book, The Giver, Lois Lowry demonstrates that through diversity can create chaos, it makes the world a more beautiful and creative place. Lowry shows this in many ways. For example, from a young age children learn to conform to society’s expectations. Furthermore, the community is free of color and weather. In the end, JOnas ultimately searches for diversity outside of his community. Lowry illustrates that though conformity brings more order, it does not let people’s self-expression shine through.

In Jonas’s world, everyone in the community lives by the community’s rules. The rules are very strict, and they are all based on the principle of Sameness. At its most basic, this means that all of the big decisions are made. Your family, your occupation, and your housing are chosen for you. You are provided with food and clothing. It is a life of predictability and control, but not control by you. You are under their control.

The Giver is a novel that is set in a society that strives to be a utopia. A utopia is essentially a is “a place where no one has to make a decision, feel pain or even have a negative thought or a bad memory” (Goepfert). In The Giver their community focuses so intensely on this concept of a peace that they make many sacrifices in their pursuit to obtain it. This includes the loss of emotion, lack of individuality, deceit of the public, and a great burden on a small few. Ultimately the cost of this utopia is too high for this society.

In The Giver, Lois Lowry shows her readers what it is like to live in a society with no diversity, no color, and no freedom. In this society, there is a twelve-year old boy, named Jonas, who finds the truth about life outside of his community. He does not have the option of choice, and he is stuck in a futuristic world of “sameness”. Jonas’ world is dull, and he wants to change it because it does not have the amazing features and opportunities that he learns about. In this story, Lois Lowry is warning her readers that too much conformity can lead to no freedom and no true happiness.

When some people hear the words ‘perfect society’ what do they think of? Take a look at our society, then take a look at Jonas’s society, between our two societies there are some comparisons and a vast amount of differences. For instance, the rules are different, as well as their family units and their individuality.While our society is more on the modern side, Jonas’s society is plainer.

I have read the dystopian novel “The Giver” (1993) which is written by the beloved American author Lois Lowry. “The Giver” is about a twelve-year-old boy with the name Jonas. Jonas lives a similar life as all the others in the community, until the Ceremony of Twelve when he got assigned the task as the Receiver of Memory. As The Receiver of Memory it is Jonas’ task to keep all the memories of the past so not everyone needs to keep this burden. Although Jonas received beautiful memories with a lot of colors and happiness he also felt grief, pain and anger. The Giver and Jonas were tired of being the only ones who have to keep the memories and feel the pain. Therefore, does Jonas leave the community so the memories will bit by bit, come back to the citizens of the community.

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.

Stop, think about this for a moment. You are in a community that cannot see color, has no feelings, no choices to be made on your own, and no diversity between each other. How would you feel? Jonas, a twelve year old boy and the Giver have to live in this community knowing all this. As they live in this futuristic dystopian community they share memories of the past and what is elsewhere. Choice, diversity, and feelings could change the Giver community and make it a more positive place.

“When you receive the memories, You have the capacity to see beyond.” said The Giver when he explained the job of being the receiver to Jonas, in Lois Lowry’s The Giver. In the novel The Giver, the main character Jonas lives in a bland, boring community where everyone is the same. When he receives the assignment of being the receiver he realizes how disappointing the life he is living is once he gets memories from The Giver, of how life used to be. He lives in a society that is very different from ours in many different ways. Three main differences between Jonas’s society and society today are family, rules/consequences and colors.

The novels Code Talker and The Giver contain main characters that have a share in their similarities and differences. At a glance we see the characters as different in every way possible, but when you look deeper and think harder you start to notice that they are similar. Jonas from The Giver stands out among the dark eyed people because of his light eyes, and Ned Begay from Code Talker stands out because of his heritage. Learning to be different shows the readers that being original is good, but being unique is outstanding.

Rachel is very anxious on her eleventh birthday. She seems to feel very uncomfortable with the meaning of aging up. Sandra Cisneros uses selective detail to show that Rachel is uneasy. Rachel says, “how long till lunchtime...how long till I can take the red sweater...bunch it”(38-39), this proves that Rachel does not feel comfortable in a simple situation. She also has an interesting view on birthdays. Rachel feels almost confused at the thought of celebrating being a year older. She says that “...you might say something stupid,...the part of you that’s still ten.”(6). This is very unusual way of thinking for a girl her age.