Liam’s Giver Essay
Right at the beginning of the year we started reading a book called The Giver. We then annotated and wrote an essay. I will admit I wanted to scream with happiness when I got the grade(It was a four) But I also was astonished at what worked and what didn’t. I remember the final revision I did on the essay I hardly wanted to look at it anymore. I don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad. I had worked on it so much and had re read it so often that I didn’t have anything else to put in. I think that is what it feels like to do your absolute best, or close to it, and it felt good. What I took away from this essay was that going over something all the time actually does work. While I don’t think it is good to overthink a piece of work, I really think that Suzanne guided our essay so that we did a good job, while not thinking about every little detail.
Name: Liam Mackenzie Humanities
7th Grade The Giver
Rebel With a Cause
Suppression, hypocrisy, and ignorance are traits that people in power use to make their ideal world. In Lois Lowry’s, The Giver, people in power do this more than ever. Everybody must act the same and it is thought of as rude to stand out. Knowledge is restricted and the citizens’ emotions are washed away by rules. The only way to take back life is to fight for it, and one boy might have the courage to do it. Jonas, a 12 year old boy, lives in a world where sameness is always better. Jonas has gone along with this for his whole life, but when he becomes The Receiver of Memory, he gains the knowledge of the past and what life was like with color and beauty. He doesn’t want to go back to his monotone community, and the only way of staying in this new magical world, is to fight back and rebel. The idea of a perfect world is impossible. The Elders, who control Jonas’s community, want perfection or the closest thing to it. They decided that to make their utopia possible, they have to drown out emotions with rules. Jonas starts to break some of these rules and finds out that the more rules he breaks the closer he gets to the truth.
In Jonas’s community, rebellion is The Elders biggest fear. They have set hundreds of rules blinding people from any secrets they have. Jonas wants to uncover those secrets and quench his curiosity, but to do so he has to start rebelling. The first step to this is to wonder. “Jonas, listening, thought suddenly about the bridge and how, standing there, he had wondered what lay Elsewhere. Was there someone there, waiting, who would receive the tiny released twin? Would it grow up Elsewhere, not knowing,”(Lowry, p. 97). Most things in the community are regulated, including thoughts. Even when Jonas is thinking about what lays elsewhere he is breaking the rules. Rebellion is thought of as a negative, but in Jonas’s case when he rebels, even the slightest bit, he gets one step closer to changing his community. This quote shows Jonas’s resistance to being part of the community. As a Receiver, Jonas’s mind is being opened up to entirely new concepts on a daily basis. For example, on the first day of training, he remembers and feels the pain of a sunburn. It surprises him, but the pain excites him. A month later he is given the memory of a war zone. He sees the suffering, and he feels it himself. Fitting in and being the same is out of the question for Jonas. His isolation as the Receiver automatically makes him stand out. Jonas is embracing his differences, and accepting them. Now Jonas strives to discover his peculiarities and wants to open himself up to new emotions. Lowry has showed us many examples of rebellion and how it brings life and feeling into people. When Rosemary releases all her memories, the people discover the beauty of the world and also feel the fear.
The definition of a utopia is “an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.” The most important word in that sentence is “everything.” “Everything” is the deciding factor between a utopia and just a normal place. Jonas can change the community and be the missing puzzle piece to make it a normal place.
If Jonas was to see beyond and leave the community, he would not only quench his constant curiosity for the world, but also, like Rosemary, release the memories and show the community what true emotion is. In Jonas’s case, rebellion might not just be a good thing, it might change the fate of his community and his life forever. The only real way for Jonas to thrive and learn, is to rebel against the community. Jonas has wished to see what lies beyond, has started to become independant, and dreamed about one day leaving the community to release all the memories. Jonas needs to start taking action in his community by challenging sameness and rebelling.
Jonas has started to rebel and care less about what other people think. He has grown and become more of an independent person and now he doesn’t rely on what other people think of him, but only himself. This thought of carelessness pleases him, but he soon comes to his senses and realises that it was not realistic to think that way. “Jonas suggested, ‘you and I don’t need to care about the rest of them.’ The Giver looked at him with a questioning smile. Jonas hung his head. Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything,”(Lowry, p. 128). This one sentence shows the immense amount of growth Jonas has made since becoming the Receiver. At the beginning of the book Jonas spends about two pages trying to find the words to explain the way he feels. Later he starts to become more careless, and by page 128, Jonas is telling the Receiver that he doesn’t even need to care about the other citizens. While this might seem like a bad example of rebellion, it not only shows that perfection is not a necessity, but that when Jonas sees the world and feels the new emotions he starts looking at the big picture. Lowry is showing that once you put things into perspective you don’t get caught up in little details, like the correct word to describe how you feel. Jonas is starting to realise what really matters, and that The Elders are blinding everybody from the truth by focusing them in on all the little details. As a result, they never get to the big picture. The community will never realise that The Elders are bad people if they keep thinking so much about every little detail. Jonas can rebel and change the community’s way of thinking. Jonas no longer fits into the fabric of the community and so his only option is to rebel and start taking on the new experiences.
For the first time Jonas has the power to challenge the Elders. He can threaten to release the memories of the past to the citizens and get The Elders to change the community. Now he can create his own kind of world with difference, and pain, and happiness, which is closer to perfection than his community now. Jonas has to prove that nothing bad happens when something goes wrong. He doesn’t need to strive for perfection ether, sometimes breaking the rules is not always the worst thing, and feeling different is okay. Jonas has already become more of an independent person and now is starting to envision a world without sameness. He can make that possible and change everything in his community because of his peculiarities. Jonas has wished to see what lies beyond, has started to become independant, and dreamed about one day leaving the community to release all the memories. Now he needs to take action and do it. Would you want to live in a world without change, or knowledge, or rebellion? The only reason things feel good to us is because we know what it’s like to feel bad. Without the experience of pain everything is just a blank slate. People don’t have any motives and Jonas can change that. Now that he has the memories he doesn’t fit into the community anymore and has to change it, if not for everybody else’s sake, then for himself.