ipl-logo

The Giver Literary Analysis

826 Words4 Pages

The Power of Memories

“It’s just that… without the memories it’s all meaningless.” (Lowry). Jonas’s community has control of everything, he lives in a seemingly perfect world, but that’s because one person bears all of the hurt and sorrow their ancestors ever endured, but that one person also experiences the real joy that comes with those memories. The Community tries to hide all memories from their citizens, but it has it consequences. The people aren’t really human anymore; they are numb to sentiment. In the novel the Giver by Lois Lowry, Jonas learns how people can’t have real emotions without memories by experiencing true sorrow, true joy, and true love.

In Jonas’s community, people always express their feelings, but when they say they’re sad, they aren’t truly somber. The citizens’ lives are made so that they never experience real …show more content…

According to Jonas’s parents, people enjoy each other's’ presence, but nobody really loves one another. Because Jonas has access to all of the memories, he learns what love is and how the community has banned one of the most important feelings of all. With this in mind, after the Giver shared his favorite memory with Jonas, Jonas admitted, “‘I couldn’t quite get the word for the whole feeling of it, the feeling that was so strong in the room.’ ‘Love,’ The Giver told him.” (Lowry). The memory that the Giver had shared with Jonas was a memory of a family gathering on Christmas, which radiated great love between the family members. However, Jonas’s community has disposed of love by making all of the citizens take a pill that smothers their feelings. After receiving the memory of Christmas, Jonas decides to stop taking the pill because he wants to experience love himself. Jonas thinks that getting rid of love is a terrible thing, but the community had to do it because love posed yet another risk of corruption for the perfect

Show More
Related

  • The Giver Quote Analysis

    1518 Words  | 7 Pages

    (STEWE-1) Jonas now knowing the truth has broken him into a thousand pieces. This is a big moment because this is when the giver and Jonas begin to plan his escape. Jonas is desperate to be with the giver because it is his only real relationship “I 'll do it. I think I can do it.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Courage In The Giver By Lois Lowry

    640 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Giver by Lois Lowry is a novel about a boy, Jonas who becomes the new receiver of memory. While he is the receiver, he experiences color and emotions, which the community did not have, they had sameness. The people there didn’t have emotions and couldn’t see color, only black and white and shades of grey. Jonas and the Giver wanted to give the memories to the people without Jonas dying. The Giver and Jonas both figure out a way for him to go somewhere else outside the community where there is color, animals and different weather.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Diversity In The Giver

    577 Words  | 3 Pages

    Stop, think about this for a moment. You are in a community that cannot see color, has no feelings, no choices to be made on your own, and no diversity between each other. How would you feel? Jonas, a twelve year old boy and the Giver have to live in this community knowing all this. As they live in this futuristic dystopian community they share memories of the past and what is elsewhere.

    Read More

  • Diversity In The Giver

    779 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Giver Essay How would you feel if you lived in a community whare thare was no diversity, no choice, and no memories? Well that's how it is for Jonas. Jonas lives in a community with his Mother, Father, little sister, and Gabriel a baby his father has taken in. Jonas thinks his world is perfect that is until he turns 12 and is selected to be the next giver and receiver special training from the Giver. With the memories comes great pain.

    Read More

  • The Giver Quotes Analysis

    687 Words  | 3 Pages

    This remind me again of the “perfect society” seting that they all cant feel pain or the feelings of scare,happy,or thrilled.. This quote shows that the giver is really focus in his job that he didnt want to have childrean or A spouse he just wanted to be the reciver. I think jonas will understand why the giver life is memories when he gets some more. If was jonas i would have understand why the giver says that the memories is his life because thats the only thing he dose. It seems unfair that theres a reciver of memory i say this beacuse everyone should experince the worst feeling and the best feeling and not just let everything on one person with all differnt kinds of momeries and

    Read More

  • The Giver Memory Theme

    805 Words  | 4 Pages

    He and Giver started plotting to send Jonas away to Elsewhere, despite how it will affect the people in Jonas’s community. Giver volunteers to stay and help those in the community. Jonas’s new memories make him a real person, with different emotions and he knows the differences between right and wrong. Jonas can now show individuality. Without having memories, we cannot show that we are all different

    Read More

  • Examples Of Conformity In The Book Thief

    1459 Words  | 6 Pages

    The memories that Jonas is exposed to cause him to wish to escape his “perfect” community that has been kept the same for years. Once Jonas experiences these true emotions, he realizes that the feelings expressed in his society are nowhere near the level of depth that true feelings possess, thus reinforcing the theme. “But now Jonas had experienced real sadness... He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those. These were deeper and they did not need to be told.

    Read More

  • The Giver Compare And Contrast Essay

    718 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagine living in a world with no freedom, choice, individuality, and color. Would you want to live in a world like this? Most of you would have said no, but a boy named Jonas has no choice, but to adhere to his community’s rules. In the book and the movie, “The Giver”, by Louis Lowery, Jonas finds it difficult to accept his community’s way of life. However, after he becomes the receiver of memory, he challenges the community after discovering what the world used to be like before sameness.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between The Giver And The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

    476 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine living a normal life in a normal town but suddenly, your life has been turned upside down. This is the unfortunate reality for the main characters in The Giver and in “The Lottery”. In The Giver, a Utopian Society chooses a receiver of memory whos job is to handle all of the memories from generations past. In “The Lottery”, a quaint little farming town comes together for a sacrificial ritual to help get a better harvest. Both of the ritualistic styles of life in the Giver by Lois Lowry and in the short story, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson demonstrate the overall theme of tradition.

    Read More

  • The Giver's Utopia

    1737 Words  | 7 Pages

    The Giver is a novel that is set in a society that strives to be a utopia. A utopia is essentially a is “a place where no one has to make a decision, feel pain or even have a negative thought or a bad memory” (Goepfert). In The Giver their community focuses so intensely on this concept of a peace that they make many sacrifices in their pursuit to obtain it. This includes the loss of emotion, lack of individuality, deceit of the public, and a great burden on a small few. Ultimately the cost of this utopia is too high for this society.

    Read More

  • Jonas: Changing The Community In The Giver

    517 Words  | 3 Pages

    One memory change that. Jonas saw the Giver’s favorite memory. The memory was about Christmas. It showed love, warmth, and grandparents. At the end of the book Jonas became affectionate.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis: The Giver By Lois Lowry

    846 Words  | 4 Pages

    Jonas felt anger for his father and the pain he feels for the baby twin. On page 168 in the giver,Jonas realized that they been playing a game of war ( Lowry). Jonas feel sad and misunderstood for the boy in war. Jonas sadly understood that no one know what he is feeling. These are like real life because some careless people don 't think about others and think that everything is just a joke.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Memories In The Giver By Lois Lowry

    865 Words  | 4 Pages

    Jonas hates how his society decides to keep memories a secret from everyone. Jonas remarks: “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared” (Lowry 154). Jonas feels that memories, whether it be good or bad, should be shared with everyone.

    Read More

  • Examples Of The Perfect Society In The Giver

    754 Words  | 4 Pages

    Although in our society, anyone can get opportunities to make their life great and can prevent some pain from entering their life like physical or heartbreak, but everyone loses someone they love and that’s something no one is able to control. Everyone has to bear the pain and learn to live without them knowing they can never be replaced, but not in Jonas’ society. Since there is no love, no one knows how to care for others who have passed or been ‘released’, “He pushed the plunger very slowly, injecting the liquid into the scalp, vain until the syringe was empty.” (Lowry 149). Before

    Read More

  • A Dystopian Life In Lois Lowry's The Giver

    737 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since Jonas lives in a community where each person’s choice is restricted, their development is stunted in many ways in the name of stability and predictability. This novel has also depicted the relationship between memory and wisdom because as we reach towards the end, Jonas has well understood what will benefit and what will hamper the stability of the community and that has come through by his discussion of these memories with the Giver. Jonas here serves as an intermediary with the humanity, who is supposed to deliver this newfound knowledge of memories to the other people. This aspect can be closely related to prophecy in religion. Besides that, the writer has managed to invoke retrospection in the readers which relates to the social balance and the systemic alignment of a person’s vocation to their persona which eliminates; to an extent, their susceptibility to sentimentality when it comes to perception.

    Read More

More about The Giver Literary Analysis

Open Document