Dystopian Society In The Giver By Lois Lowry

Imagine having to live the same way as everyone else and having hardly any freedom to do anything you wanted to do. Everyday of your life you have to follow so many ridiculous rules that you never get to explore what the world has to see and do. Would you be okay with hardly living a life, it just feels like your there and instead of having what you already have? The novel Anthem was written by Ayn Rand in 1937, but as the years went by it has been edited a couple times. The last edit made in the novel was in 1961. This novel is based in the future but read as it's in the past. The reason it’s seen as in the past is because the council hides the history from the unmentionable times from the society. The Giver

“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.

People have always wondered what a difference and similarity a dystopian/utopian society would have with our modern day society.With the help of modern day society and the givers society we can figure out the differences between Modern day society and the Givers society.Modern day society and the society in the Giver have many differences including Rules, Family, And Figurehead/Leadership; however they also have a few similarities.

Both societies were ruled by a dictator that took away their freedom. Unfortunately a society that is seeking perfection usually becomes a dystopian society. A dystopian society is a society that is dehumanizing and as unpleasant as possible. Harrison Beregeron’s world and N. Korea both shared these traits. Both societies were ruled by a dictator that took away their freedom.

Jonas lives in a communist society where memories from the past don 't take place. His community is a hypocritical disaster, the elders break their own rules that they came up with, they take away color and don 't even tell anyone about the occurrence, and worst of all their own rule adherence worker breaks many of their rules, multiple times. Jonas 's society is full of rulebreakers and liers, and for their own sake are also hypocrites.

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.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” In “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, they did exactly this to achieve utter “perfection”. In this novel, the main goal of this society was to keep everything perfect, no matter what. The government would do absolutely anything to keep their society “faultless”. They took every flaw, and every ounce of pain away. Instead of dealing with that pain, they cultivated a seemingly perfect facade and a seemingly perfect society. The problem with this is, nobody is flawless, even the protagonist of the novel. To make this society perfect, the weight of every struggle in the history of mankind was put on Jonas’s shoulders. But, the only thing that resulted from this was anarchy. From this I learned that although perfection is desirable, it is not attainable.

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.

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.

“‘[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.

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.

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 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.

When daily life is controlled, it is possible some people wouldn’t have the ability to see color and most parents wouldn’t love their children just due to the fact that it was not the way they were “programmed”. It may get a little frustrating after awhile... if someone even noticed that something was off. In the science fiction novel The Giver by Lois Lowry, there is a twelve-year-old boy named Jonas. He is named the new Receiver which is a very respected and high-end job in his community. This job also introduces him to a man that he calls the Giver. The Giver’s job is to show Jonas all the memories from the past and to teach him how to guide the Council of Elders using the memories that the Giver passes to him. Throughout the