The Giver's Utopia

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. The loss of emotion in The Giver is one of the most evident costs of maintaining the peace. This is shown largely through precision of language. The characters in this novel can only use words that show essentially

This is because everyone has to be equal, which to them means that everyone has to be the same, and this lack of individuality is yet another cost of maintaining The Givers so called utopia. People in this community have almost no control over who they are and what they do because they have no freedom to choose. They are forced to live in a society where sameness is preached and individuality is scorned. They essentially live in a black and white community that forfeits "art, music, literature, spontaneity, passion, even color itself ”(Chamberlain). This is represented when Jonas asks why everyone cannot see colors, The Giver replies by saying that if a person has could choose their colors “he might make wrong choices” (Lowry 98). When Their community is also set up as if it follows some sort of template that is the same for everyone. There is a specific ceremony for each new year with a new change for each child, this keeps all kids on the same pace and ensure that they don 't stray too far from the norm. On top of this, all citizens all have to share their “dreams and feelings at daily family councils” and if they ever make any little mistake they are require to apologize immediately (Kendall). All theses requirements are set in place to ensure that all humans conform

At first The Giver warns Jonas that this process of receiving memories “will be painful”(Lowery 85). This pain comes in the form of both the joyful and the terrifying memories. The positive memories that he receives cause him pain because they make him see how much happier the people in his community could be. “Jonas’s realizations about the constraints of this rigidly organized life come gradually", but they begin to weigh on him (Chamberlain). Everytime he learns something new about the past he is overcome by the will to share all of his mental experiences with the rest of the population, but he knows he is not able to do this. His awareness about what could be versus what is cause him more and more heartache every moment. On top of this The Giver begins to transfer “the painful memories” to Jonas where he learns “physical and emotional pain experienced through injury, loss, grief, rage, and cruelty” (Zirkle). He goes through “suffering” and “even Violence” when he receives a memory of a dying soldier on a battlefield (Chamberlain). The effect that this particular memory has on Jonas is portrayed through this sentence “overwhelmed by pain, he laid there in the fearsome stench for hours, listened to the men and