Name: Grace Humanities
7th Grade The Giver
Blinded From Reality: Ignorance and Homogeneity in the Giver
Imagine a world where people are blinded from reality and are restricted from pain and emotion, this is The Giver by Lois Lowry. The Giver is a book about jonas, a young boy and on his 12 birthday he receives an assignment that will change his life forever. Jonas discovers a hidden past of his community and reveals true emotion. He is exposed to memory and history and will question all the he has ever learned. This society is a dystopia because people are kept ignorant and are blinded from emotion.
In the community of the Giver people are kept ignorant. The elders limit the amount of knowledge and memory that one person can have keeping them ignorant. This keeps people from questioning the rules of the society and keeps a perfect utopia. For example, each household is only allowed to have 4 books about rules and restrictions so there is no knowledge circulating the community. “The books in his own dwelling were the only books he had ever seen. He had never known that other books existed.” (Giver page.74) History and memory are being restricted from the community and the giver contains it. This is important because people are being isolated from history and memory, blinding them with ignorance. This isn’t fair because jonas’s community never will get exposed to color and adventure unless they leave the community. Living in a world without pain and hardship is living in a world without emotion. Imagine not getting happy or sad or not loving something. In Jonas’s community everyone is exposed to the same thing creating homogeneity between people in the community.
In the givers community everyone is connected by homogeneity. The elders have made rules so everyone looks the same and acts the same. This keeps people from questioning difference and it makes a “perfect utopia.” For example every one wears badge cloths and has the same physical feature. “Jonas himself, and a female five who he had noticed had the different, lighter eyes. No one mentioned such things; it was not a rule, but it was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different.” (Giver page 20) This is important because the Elders try to control sameness and reject difference. Some things Elders can’t change like eye color or personality. Eye color is one of the things that makes Jonas special and different. I wonder what would be Jonas’s reaction if he lived in our world where everyone is different and only small things are the same? Jonas has been different from the start and that has opened up possibilities for jonas to excel and thrive in this community.
Everyone is connected by homogeneity and people are being blinded and isolated from reality. Jonas’s community is a dystopia because people are not being respected as an important individual. Jonal is different from his peers because he has more knowledge and difference than the rest of the community. He realises that the elders keep people ignorant to keep things in order and out of chaos. Do we want to live in a world where people aren’t allowed to have freedom of speech or a world without emotion? A perfect world is only possible if we have imperfection because it allows us room to grow.