Oni Thornell              

                    Is Knowledge Dangerous? Is Ignorance Safe?                                                                                                               

             

What if everything you believed in was wrong? This is what happened in the Giver by Lois Lowry. Jonas is in what he thought was a perfect world. He was looking forward to the day when he would finally learn what his purpose was. He could never know that that he would receive a job that would eventually change the lives of millions. This society is a utopia and dystopia. It is a utopia because the Elders keep everyone safe by keeping them ignorant. It is also a dystopia because the elders don’t give them the freedom of choice.

In the Giver the citizens of the community are Ignorant because they don’t have memories of the past. The Memories are vital to make a living and working community. Memories provide information that most community people are ignorant to. In this quote the children are playing a game that is based on war. They don’t realize the meaning of this game because they are ignorant to these past memories. On page 111 Lois lowry writes ”One of the children raised an imaginary rifle and made an attempt to destroy him with a firing noise. “Pssheeew!” Then they were all silent, standing awkwardly, and the only sound was the sound of Jonas’s shuddering breaths. He was struggling not to cry,” (Giver, 111) This shows that the community is ignorant because they don’t have memories of the past. They would never have played this game if they had realized the weight of it. The only reason that the community isn’t plummeting into chaos is because of the Giver. History is meant to be learned from. The mistakes we make are good because then we can learn from them. When you don’t have the memories of the past, that means you will be most likely to make a lot of mistakes that you could’ve avoided with the knowledge that Jonas has. The Elders don’t want anyone to know about the past because it can hurt them. To the Elders, knowledge is dangerous.

In the Giver the Elders believe that it is better for the community to stay ignorant. They think that knowledge is dangerous. The elders believe that it is safer to remain ignorant because they think that the community people won’t be able to handle the pain and misfortune the past contains. In this quote you can see that Jonas was longing for ignorance after he got memories of the past, ”JONAS DID NOT want to go back. He didn’t want the memories, didn’t want the honor, didn’t want the wisdom, didn’t want the pain. He wanted his childhood again, his scraped knees and ball games.” (Giver, 102). This quote shows that knowledge is dangerous to this community. This community is based on ignorance if someone would learn something about memories they might react to it in a bad way and the entire community might spiral into chaos. Ignorance plays a very important part in this community. Unfortunately they have led the people of the community be ignorant for so long that it would be dangerous for them to show the people now. This is eminent in this quote. Jonas is scared because all these memories changed what he has been taught his entire life. The Elders thought that knowledge was dangerous so they kept the entire community ignorant because they thought that was safe.

Jonas’s community is both a utopia and dystopia because you can’t have a one without the other. You can’t have one without the other because there are certain aspects of “utopias” and “dystopias” in the real world. By getting rid of one dystopian aspect another will pop up because of it. If you keep the community people ignorant that also runs the risk of them finding out. Knowledge then becomes dangerous to the community because if they had not grown up with these memories and knowledge it will be devastating and potentially chaos-inducing.  

We live in a world that is not perfect. We live in a dystopian and utopian world. Unlike the Giver any choices we make will affect people all over the world. For example, if we were to eliminate the prospect of war then thousands of people would lose their jobs all over the world. They would come home and lose maybe money they were depending on. If they were depending on that money to pay bills and get the food they might end up being homeless. When you try and control and suppress problems it will sometimes take away happier aspects of life as well as add the problems. Even though we might not have a perfect world, Would you rather live in ignorance?