The Giver by Lois Lowery
You have probably never lived in a place where everything is overseen and everything you do is all planned out. You have no choice in what you do as a job and no choice in family. Many things you know and love are changed so that they are part of a forthcoming utopia. The main character of the book, The Giver by Lois Lowery, is Jonas. Jonas starts as an eleven year old boy and turns thirteen at the end of the book. Throughout his life he realizes that he lives in a completely man made and organised world. This leads him to think that everything he knows, and the world he lives in is wrong. He goes throughout his life learning of the past and how the rulers, called the elders, corrected everything to their liking, just to make the community a utopia in their eyes. In Jonas’s community the elders strive for correction and control to make the community a utopia. They do this to stay in power and to prevent rebellion.
Over the many years they have ruled, the elders have always made changes to keep the community perfect, in their eyes, and enable them to stay on top and in command. The elders try to make the community perfect at all costs. They would use all their power just to obtain and rule a true Utopian society according to their view. In this quote it shows how they changed everything for that perfect utopia they pictured, “‘Climate Control. Snow made growing food difficult, limited the agricultural periods. And unpredictable weather made transportation almost impossible at times. It wasn’t a practical thing, so it became obsolete when we went to Sameness.’And hills, too,’ he added.’They made conveyance of goods unwieldy. Trucks; buses. Slowed them down. So—’ He waved his hand, as if a gesture had caused hills to disappear.’Sameness,’ he concluded.’” (Lowery, p. 74).This shows how the Elders must have gone through many years to finally eradicate all things that seemed useless or would get in the way of everyday routines. One of the reasons they make all these changes is to keep their world perfect, but there are many other reasons they do this. They also hope to restrain the people by doing such things.
Over the many years the elders have ruled they have changed lots of things, and also disposed of many things loved by the community, these corrections have kept the community dehumanized but therefor under their jurisdiction . This shows how the elders just want to be in power. In their view, to be in power they have to make the citizens think that everything is being taken care of. To make it like this they have to change many things so that it seems perfect, that way the people won’t ask for change and/or rebel. This quote tells us how organized everything is because if it’s not planned people might start to question how they live and turn to the elders in rebellion. “But Jonas remembered the rules. No medication for anything related to his training,” (Lowery p. 95). Jonas and all other people follow the rules very carefully so they never run into any trouble with the elders, and don’t get released from the community. The elders do a lot of hard work to keep themselves under control and keep the community from rebelling, but there are some things that seem imperfect to them that they still have to correct.
In Jonas’s community the Elders main ambition is to be in power at all times and to make the community a utopia using their ability to annihilate anything they don’t want to be there. They make all the corrections just to prevent the civilians from rebelling. The Elders control things like the local climate, the terrain and many other natural structures. The Elders also expel things like color. Color plays a big part in The Giver, the Elders give much effort to prevent the amount of color in many of the surrounding objects. For there to be a perfect world (In the Elder’s view) there must be no questioning of their right to be in power and no thoughts of rebellion. They do not want the people to have rights that they do not have, and they don’t want anyone to be free.
I liked writing the Giver essay because I got to talk about two to topics and not just one. I found it interesting how I got to relate the two topics because it would make it stronger in so many ways. Although I was ill when we made most of this I gathered ideas while I was in bed.
