Dystopian Society In Lois Lowry's The Giver

Lois Lowry’s The Giver revolves around the story of twelve years old boy named, Jonas, who lives in a community where all human disturbances are banned; no wars, no crimes, no hunger or sorrow and not even the binary of rich and poor. In this community, all citizens are comfortable and equal. In terms of equality, the community’s maxim is “sameness”, where everything seems utopian, flawless as claimed by Erika Gotllieb, “each dystopian society contains within its seeds of a utopian dream” (8). However, to achieve this idealistic state of social stability, there must be a price to pay in which people of the community are deprived from their memories, emotions and choices. The Elders are the leaders of the state and responsible one for making decisions concerning everything in the society which encompasses choosing parents.

Before the Ceremony of twelve that the community holds each year to decide the future career of children, Jonas is taught about the supremacy of rules in his community that include precision of language, participating in the volunteer hours and submitting to the assigned parents. Subsequently, he is assigned as the ‘Receiver of Memory,’ a

By applying the Foucauldian theory, it will be evident how the state in both novels’ deploys various techniques including the Art of Distribution, The Control of Activity, The Organization of Genesis and The Composition of Forces, to generate a group of docile, beneficent bodies. The individuals are presented as self-disciplined individuals when the state exposes them to constant surveillance. Ultimately, the state implements certain ideologies in the society to sustain its full power and control over its individuals and the family turns to be its main apparatus to inject the rules into the minds of the individuals. Individuals in both novels are treated as objects and denied from the right to think and act by