Individuality In The Giver

What if we lived in a world of peace and equality? What if we lived in a world with no differences? A world with no social classes and inequality. That sounds pretty amazing doesn’t it? In Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver that is the reality. The catch? The catch is freedom. There is no room for being different, no room for spontaneity, no room for experimentation and breaking the rules. If you break the rules you will be caught and their is no room for forgiveness. Also, if you are diagnosed with a disease, or just simply sick, you must likely will be released into the “elsewhere” world.

Imagine a world where you could make all of your own choices , make all of your day-dreams of what life could be like come true. That world does not support governments that will make choice for you. That world is what the giver, written by Lois lowry promotes, that world is anarchy.

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.

Imagine living in a perfect society. No pain, everyone is equal, and perfect laws that every person follows. Now imagine being exactly like every other person with all your daily choices being made by someone else for you. In the book The Giver by Lois Lowry, this is exactly how they are living. The author writes about how Jonas’ perfect society is not so perfect after all. There is no troubles, pain and inequality but there is also no love, choice or individuality. Everyone is the exact same person. People need there differences to be who they are, otherwise what is the point in living if it means nothing special? Although an utopian society seems perfect with equality and peace, everything has its faults even in if considered perfect such as loss of individuality and choice as in societal ideas like birthday celebrations, being assigned a family and having others choose your time of death.

“We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others” (Lowry). In other words, this means that to get what you want, you have to get rid of other things you have. Although there are many similarities between The Giver and our society, there are a lot more differences like families, rules, and personal freedoms.

The society Lowry depicts in The Giver is a utopian society; a perfect world as envisioned by its creators. It has removed fear, pain, famine, illness, conflict, and hatred, all things that most of people would like to eliminate in today’s society. In this utopian community, major problems are rare, only minor problems such as scraping your knee would happen. Even when this would happen there would be medications sent to them. In Lois Lowry’s award-winning novel, The Giver, Jonas’s society is considered to be utopian because the society has an overall sense of sameness, organization, and minimal problems.

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.

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.

by Lois Lowry, Jonas is selected to have the job of the Receiver of Memory where he finds out the true history of the world he lives in. While Jonas is training, he finds out some of the bad things about his society. Some of the bad aspects are when twins are born the lighter one is killed, everything was not always the same, and that the world once had more features.

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.

Themes; every book contains a couple themes to demonstrate the author 's ideas or opinions. After reading The Giver, I thought that the book contained four major themes that displayed Lowry’s ideas and concerns. The first theme I found was the importance of individuality and freedom. It showed Lowry’s concerns about the society today. The second theme I noticed was memories/knowledge and wisdom. I think it displayed how the amount of knowledge a person has measured how wise and respected they are. The third theme I found was maturing. Coming of age, especially with children showed that they were now expected of more things.

Winston Churchill once said “Perfection is the enemy of progress”. Many books have a goal set to perfect the imperfect. The novel The Giver tries to use this mindset in their society by having strict regulations on just about everything. Modern societies nowadays are far from this illusion, but has concepts that resemble this dystopia.

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.

One of the greatest goals to many is the pristine and luxurious idea of a nation without blunder or defect. This thought is a main focal point in The Giver, by Lois Lowry. "Jonas stared at the screen, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did. The little twin lay motionless. His father was putting things away. Folding the blanket, closing the cupboard" (Pg. 150). Even in a world with no emotion and complete order, mistakes are inevitable. These people try to use conformity as a means to erase self identity. They take out memories so that they don't have to acknowledge the fact that they are not "releasing" babies and elderly to Elsewhere, they are murdering them. "'She left here that day, left this room, and did not go back to her dwelling. I was notified by the Speaker that she had gone directly to the Chief Elder and asked to be released" (Pg. 143). No matter how hard anyone tries the perfect society is not reachable. There will always be cons to success; in The Giver, these downfalls result in the suicide of the young and searching of discharge by the rest. We, as humans, will always seek the correct way and order for things to be; but the truth is, there is no right way to do things because everyone has their own

How is the society of The Giver really that different from being a modern day society? When people try to create perfect societies, it creates mayhem! Our modern day society is far from a perfect society in the novel The Giver. While appearing perfect, Jonas’ society has many rules and laws under the surface that make it much more dangerous than modern day society.