Below is an Essay I wrote about the book The Giver by Lois Lowry. I am proud of my grammar and punctuation. I am also proud of my thesis. I think I wrote this essay well because I was interested in my thesis and themes.
What is a Real Utopia?
Emma Diamond 10/26/16 Humanities 7A Giver Essay
How would you feel if you lived in a place where you aren’t allowed to make your own choices, everything is black and white, and most things are the same? This is what life is like for the people in The Giver by Lois Lowry. The protagonist, a 12 year old boy named Jonas, is different than everyone else in his community. In December, at the ceremony of 12, he is assigned the Receiver of Memories. This means he gets to learn all about the past from the holder of all the memories, the Giver. Jonas sees color, love, death, and pain. The rest of the society has never experienced any of these things, which makes them clueless and ignorant. Jonas will have to decide if he wants to risk everything to help his community or continue to be isolated. In Jonas’s society everyone sees in black and white. The Elders created it this way to keep the utopia. People being unable to see color reinforces sameness because it is hard for them to differentiate things. Eventually Jonas begins to see color and wants to help everyone else in his community see it too.
The lack of color in Jonas’s community accomplishes sameness, which keeps the utopia. Since people see everything in black and white, differentiating things becomes difficult and therefore less decisions need to be made. While Jonas is with the Giver he explains something important about color. “Because it was a memory from the time when the color was,” (Lowry, pg. 82) This shows that Jonas’s community doesn’t have color, but it did in the past. The Elders decided to make the society see black and white to prevent people from making their own choices, meaning nobody makes mistakes. For example if someone went shopping and there were ten different colored shirts they would choose what color or colors they wanted to buy. What if they made the wrong decision and later discovered they wanted a different color? This is why the Elders don’t think color is a good thing. Today mistakes are valuable because we learn from them. Therefore when someone makes a mistake they don’t do it again. Everyone seeing in black and white keeps things the same, but when Jonas sees color he wants difference.
Jonas starting to see color causes him to want to be allowed to make his own decisions. Since Jonas can now easily differentiate things, there are many more choices for him to make. While Jonas is with the Giver he has a very important question. “‘What if we could hold up things that were bright red, or bright yellow, and he could choose? Instead of the sameness,’” (Lowry, pg. 85). Because Jonas is seeing color, he wants to be able to make his own choices. This may cause him to want to rebel against the Elders and show everyone else in his community colors. If Jonas succeeded to do this the utopia would shatter because nobody in his society has experience making their own decisions and learning from their mistakes. Therefore, they would make horrible choices. Today, children are taught to make good decisions from a young age so they are prepared for bigger ones they may encounter when they grow up. This approach to choices is better than the one in Jonas’s society because, instead of completely shutting out the idea of people making decisions for themselves, we teach them how to do it wisely. Jonas is striving for difference and personal decision making to be allowed in his community.
Jonas’s society is trying to accomplish a perfect world by getting rid of color, and difference. Color being eliminated reinforces sameness, which makes it hard to differentiate many things. Not having difference is bad because everyone has the same ideas and no progress is made in the community. No progress being made means nobody is learning and life is meaningless. When Jonas begins to see new things he finds that the exclusion of color, difference, and decision making in the community creates a dystopia. Even if you didn’t have to experience anything bad, would you want to live in a world where there isn’t any color, you don’t get to make your own decisions, and almost everything is exactly the same? Maybe our reality is the real utopia and people living today shouldn’t be striving for something like Jonas’s community. Jonas ultimately starts to understand the importance of all the things being eliminated from his society and makes a big effort to help others understand them too.