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The Giver By Lois Lowry Essay

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Wars have been fought. People have gone mad. The entire world cannot seem to agree on the answer to one question: what is the meaning of life? In Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver, the community and the Elders who run it have their own answer-- to be a part of society and keep the community “perfect”. However, by getting rid of the aspects of life that cause problems, they are eliminating the purpose of living. Without choice, complex emotions, or individuality, life would not be special or have any meaning, something that the community in Lois Lowry’s novel does not understand. The ability to choose freely allows people to be different. This can be seen on page 97, where it says, “Well…” Jonas had to stop and think it through. “If everything 's …show more content…

However, this sort of thinking is not shared with the community. There, pointing out others’ differences is thought of as rude, a custom mentioned on page 20. This means that in the community, being different and individual was thought of as something to be ashamed about. Since the community is taught that differences are things to be ignored and that they are embarrassing, people with be less likely to understand that uniqueness is something to be proud about, not something to hide. For example, the many different races that can be found here are gone. Instead, everyone in the community has the same (presumably Caucasian) race. This is discovered on page 94 when the Giver says, “There was a time, actually...when flesh was many different colors. That was before we went to Sameness.” Now that the community went to Sameness, they lost a lot of special history and heritage that people could be proud of.
The community did not realize that these three elements of the human condition are vital. They form the line between going through life and truly living. But we cannot blame them. After all, the community is not the only group of people who do this. Our society forces children through a system without any choice, expects them to think and feel simply, and tries to keep them from standing out unless they have found “the cure to cancer” or the like. No one can find the meaning

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