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The Giver: A Perfect Society

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“Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting” (Anne Lamott). Can you picture our world as a perfect society? For perfection to be achieved everything would have to change. Through the book, The Giver, Lois Lowry shows how a perfect society is not always ideal for everyone. The rules of the society portrayed include a discipline wand, chosen spouse, and release. While a dystopian society may seem perfect, the novel represents the limitations and expectations of an ideal community. The Giver displays the similarities and differences of our modern world versus the “flawless” model of a perfect society. In a perfect society, everyone must be the same. To make sure of synchronization in the community, there must be discipline. …show more content…

The people in the book couldn’t handle major emotions if they were introduced to them. One emotion that they are not familiar with is loss, this dystopia explains death as “release.” The population is raised to believe that people just disappear or go away. While these citizens do not know it, people are actually euthanized. “As he continued to watch, the newchild, no longer crying, moved his arms and legs in a jerking motion. Then he went limp. He head fell to the side, his eyes half open. Then he was still” (Lowry 150). This illustration of someone dying, very few people of the community understand, so it is a shocking picture when Jonas experiences it for the first time. “He killed it! My father killed it! Jonas said to himself, stunned at what he was realizing” (Lowry 150). In our world, death is something that we hear about all the time. This occurrence is what keeps us from having the same dull emotions at the characters in this book. Modern day society does not have the same rules and regulations as Lowry describes. In a dystopian community, the citizens are lied to and know nothing, so they have no idea of their full potential. Although, present day society is not perfect, we are not blind to the reality of how the world operates unlike the people in The Giver. If modern society were to try to function as a Utopia, the result is clear that it could not be

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