This is my Giver Essay, we wrote these after we read the book The Giver by Lois Lowry. This was only a four paragraph essay which is shorter than essay I have written in the past, this men’t that it only had two body paragraphs instead of three. This was interesting because when we started to think of the topic we were going to write about, we were in the middle of the book. I wanted to do color, when I had thought of this topic there wasn’t much evidence for it. I also brought up my own topic, it seemed a littler harder and different than the other topics. Even with this I really liked it and stuck with it (even though once I wanted to change my topic) and I think that I did a good job.

Color Makes a Perfect World

By Ruby Wexler

What is a perfect world? In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, everyone is the same, they feel no real emotion, and they live bland colorless lives with families they don’t love. 12-year-old Jonas, a young boy who lives in this community which is a supposed utopia, is a good rule following citizen. This all changes when he is assigned to to be the next Receiver of Memory. As the Receiver, Jonas is given all the memories of the past. He receives the memories from the Giver who has the memories that are kept from the rest of the community. As he is receiving the memories, Jonas starts to see color. With color comes emotion and longing for someone else to share them with besides the Giver. He sets forth on an adventure to show everyone the wonders and joy they have never seen. In this society, keeping the sameness is essential to keeping the so called utopia. However, color represents difference and individuality. Emotion gives you freedom and new experiences, both of which in this society are considered dangerous to the sameness.

By trying to make a utopia the Elders have made a dystopia, where people are like blind, obedient robots. To make a utopia they took away emotion to make everyone the same, but in reality this dehumanized the community. One day the Giver is explaining the sorrows of Sameness to Jonas. “‘We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences.’ He thought for a moment. ‘We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others,’” (Lowry, p. 82). The Elders have gained control of the weather and  sickness as well as the lives and thoughts of the community. Everyone is the same, they feel no real emotion, only a toned down artificial version. People can no longer see color-this is to abolish difference, to make a perfect world. Though in a truly perfect world couldn’t people be truly happy? Yes, they take this away to stop argument and anger, though if you don’t know the opposite of  happiness you don’t know what true happiness is. Without both you cannot feel love, therefore you cannot receive the greatest gift of life, you cannot be loved. With no real emotion you cannot be happy, and with no difference you are just a one of millions, just bland without color.

In the community, there is no color, everyone looks exactly the same, and no one is special. To be truly free you have to be different, you wouldn’t get to truly live. After Jonas starts to see color for the first time, the Giver explains about skin tones. “No, flesh isn’t red. But it has red tones in it. There was a time, actually—you’ll see this in the memories later—when flesh was many different colors. That was before we went to Sameness. Today flesh is all the same, and what you saw was the red tones,” (Lowry, p. 81). Jonas sees color, he knows of difference. Later on, he wonders why the rest of the world cannot experience this. Though the answer he gets is unsatisfactory, he is told that it’s dangerous. Color represents diversity, and without diversity nothing would ever change for better or for worse. This is what has happened to Jonas’s society, everyone is the same, this is a ever looping pattern. To grow and think you must have another opinion a another way to look at things. Color gives happiness though can also give so many other emotions. Color makes us truly human. The community which is supposed to be a utopia is truly a dystopia that is full of emotionless beings that are only shells of what there once was.

To make a utopia, Jonas’s community went to sameness. Though, to keep the sameness they had to pay the price of losing the ability to see color and to feel true emotion. By letting go of these they are making a dystopia by trying to make a utopia. Jonas and the Giver are the only ones who have access to what it was like before the sameness. This makes them the only ones who can see that the world is full of puppets whose strings are held by the Elders. To have choice and freedom of thought is dangerous according to the Elders. Jonas finds out about this and decides that he wants the world to feel real emotion. To have a true utopia people must be truly happy, but you can’t be truly happy if you don’t know what anger is. If there is one point of power controlling everyone like puppets, that is a dystopia. To try to make everything perfect, you end up dehumanizing people and destroying the world.