Dictated Dystopian Community

Imagine that your entire life is planned out for you. You don’t get to make any decisions for yourself. You can’t control what you see or feel. That is how Jonas feels in The Giver, by Lois Lowry. Jonas is a 12 year old boy in his what’s supposed to be an “utopian community”. He thinks it’s a dystopia, which is an imperfect world. Jonas becomes the Receiver of Memories, which is the person who holds all of the memories from the past. The memories show Jonas what the world used to be. He learned that the Elders (Leaders of the community) hid a lot of important parts of life from the people, like colors and feelings. When Jonas finds out about the Elders’ lies he is outraged. He wants to make the community a better place. The Elders control everything in Jonas’s utopian community, which makes it a dictatorship and a dystopia. This control makes Jonas want to rebel against the community.

Jonas’s community is a dictatorship because the Elders control all things. In the community, no one has any freedom. Their entire life is planned out for them; the Elders choose their spouses, their children, and their jobs. Something that supports this is a quote of the Elder giving out the assignments (Jobs). “I apologize to my community,” (Lowry, p.55). This quote shows that the Elder said my community, not the community. Her use of the word “my” shows that the community belongs to the Elders, not the people in it. The Elders made a dictatorship. They choose everything about everyone’s’ life. They control what they are able to see and feel. Jonas starts to not like his community once he learns the truth. Jonas’ community is a dictatorship, but it is also a dystopia.

Jonas rebels against his community because the Elders have made it a dystopia. When Jonas becomes the new Receiver of Memories, he finds out the truth about how half of his life was hidden from him. He starts to rebel against the Elders, because he disagrees with the rules of the community and lack of freedom. In the upcoming quote, Jonas is starting to rebel by not taking a pill the Elders required everyone to take. The pill stopped Jonas and others in the community from feeling love. “The next morning, for the first time, Jonas did not take his pill. Something within him, something that had grown there through the memories, told him to throw the pill away,” (Lowry, p.108). This quote shows how Jonas is rebelling against his community to get some of his freedom back. Jonas likes the feeling of love, so he stops taking the pills. This is the beginning of his rebellion. Jonas then leaves the community. He left because his community was a dystopia. He wanted freedom, so he had to rebel against everything he knew. As much as the Elders were trying to make the community perfect, Jonas thought it wasn’t working. He was furious when he starting seeing all the colors and when he experienced the memory of death. These reasons are why Jonas rebelled against his community

The Elders in Jonas’s community are trying to make a utopia by taking away a lot of the people’s’ freedom. This control makes a dystopia instead. When Jonas becomes the Receiver of Memories, he sees what the world used to be. He sees all of the hidden colors and feelings and learns the secrets of the community. Would you want to live in a world where everything was hidden from you? Or would you prefer to live in the world we have now, where you have freedom? Jonas leaves his community because he wants his freedom instead of staying and fighting for everyone else’s freedom. Would you make the same choice as Jonas, or stay and help the community?

In humanities we read a book called The Giver. We made annotations about themes in the book, and eventually chose one theme to write about for the giver essay. I’m very proud of this writing because I had a good intro, which helped me make write everything else because I already had the ideas.