Two Dystopias

After reading the iconic novel, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and learning about the devastating Holocaust, I have come to a conclusion that there are many similarities between the sick realism of the world and the made up world of a book. A dystopia is a fictional world where people live under a highly controlled, totalitarian system. In both The Giver and in the Holocaust, societies were based off of: rules, sameness, and death. All qualities of a dystopia that make it the highly controlled, totalitarian system that it is. To begin, I will start with the extreme control and rules placed upon all citizens of the community in The Giver, and the millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Over the course of the Holocaust, Hitler …show more content…
In The Giver, release was the process in which someone who had failed and broken rules, or the elderly, or a newchild was lethally injected and killed. To the community, release was a sign of great failure. The only time when failure was not the case is when the elderly or a newchild is released; this becomes a ceremony and a celebration of life. On the other hand, someone may be released due to the fact that they had failed or done something wrong. “For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure” (enotes.com). In a similar but different aspect, over the course of the Holocaust, devastating forms of death took the lives of millions of innocent Jews. From gas chambers, to crematoriums, to medical experiments, to pure starvation and disease, the millions of Jews who were brutally killed during during the Holocaust couldn't have suffered more than they did. Jewish men, women, and children who were selected, were taken to gas chambers by SS officers when they first arrived at the death camps. Making the people believe that they were being cleaned, SS officers walked these innocent Jews to a room where they would strip of all clothing, and be taken to the dealy chambers. All at once, masses of Jews were killed in the these chambers with Zyklon B gas. Crematoriums were also another way that Nazis would murder Jews over the course of the Holocaust. One example is Crematoriums lll. This large building contained a gas chamber and furnaces for burning both living Jews and