Premium Essay

The Giver By Lois Lowry: Character Analysis

Submitted By
Words 1600
Pages 7
Imagine a world without any emotions. There would be no sadness, happiness, jealousy, pain, or love. Some might think that this would be a perfect society, but as proven in the book The Giver by Lois Lowry everything isn’t as perfect as it seems. In the book Jonas, the boy who was chosen to be the next Receiver, experiences a society that is different from his own. With the help of The Giver, the man who trains Jonas, he learns that “sameness” isn’t exactly perfect. The Community controls emotions in an effort to create a painless society; the result, however, is a society absent of true emotion.

Once someone in the Community begins to develop feelings for someone they are given pills to control the emotions that they are experiencing. The …show more content…
At one of Jonas’ training sessions with The Giver, The Giver gives Jonas a memory of a family on Christmas. After Jonas receives the memory he explains to The Giver how confused he was: “‘I couldn’t quite get that word for the whole feeling of it, the feeling that was so strong in the room.’ ‘Love,’ The Giver told him. Jonas repeated it. ‘Love.’ It was a word and concept new to him.” (Lowry 118). Jonas didn’t know what love was until The Giver gave him the memory of it. Jonas has never personally experienced love so this was extremely new to him. Later, The Giver makes it clear that before the Community went to “sameness”, the people were able to have feelings: “‘Jonas,’ The Giver, said after a moment, ‘it’s true that it has been this way for what seems like forever. But the memories tell us that is has not always been. People felt things once. You and I have been part of that, so we know.’” (Lowry 145). In the memories that Jonas and The Giver share there is emotion. People are able to feel scared, loved, frustrated, sad, and joyful. These memories are kept from the Community so they don’t know what real emotions are.

The people in the Community aren’t able to experience true emotion. They are forced to take pills to control stirrings, they share their “feelings” every evening, and the memories of true feelings are kept from them. Jonas eventually realizes the difference between what the Community has been calling “feelings” and real feelings. When Jonas comes to this realization he and The Giver devise a plan to give some memories of feelings back to the Community. The Community isn’t able to have true feelings or face emotions causing what may seem like a perfect society to know longer be all that

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Essay

...David Ochoa September 16, 2009 English-Mr. Harrison Summer Reading In the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry Jonas is taught that his world is perfect, but finds out that society is controlled. Jonas was one of the main characters of this novel. Throughout reading The Giver Jonas seems to always be seeking more warmth and human contact then what the society he lives in already allows. The character Jonas portrayed various characteristics. Three of those characteristics that he portrayed were intelligence, curiosity, and kindness. The first characteristic that Jonas portrayed was his curiosity. While he was at school he was playing catch with a friend he had noticed the apple change in a way. “ Does anything seem strange to you? About the apple?” ( Pg 24, Lowry) Jonas kept looking at the apple all types of ways trying to figure out what was it about the apple that would catch his eye and make him to wonder such things. Disobeying recreation area rules he decided to take the apple home so he can do further analysis on the apple. After trying to find a flaw in the apple all types of ways he somehow had to convince himself that the apple was perfectly fine, and he had curiosity get the best of him. One of the other characteristics that Jonas had was his Intelligence. His intelligence was considered to be one of his unusual characteristics traits, but was to his advantage. Only twelve years of his age but his decision making was good and would catch on to things quickly...

Words: 545 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

The Giver Full Summary

...THE GIVER Lois Lowry ← Plot Overview → The giver is written from the point of view of Jonas, an eleven-year-old boy living in a futuristic society that has eliminated all pain, fear, war, and hatred. There is no prejudice, since everyone looks and acts basically the same, and there is very little competition. Everyone is unfailingly polite. The society has also eliminated choice: at age twelve every member of the community is assigned a job based on his or her abilities and interests. Citizens can apply for and be assigned compatible spouses, and each couple is assigned exactly two children each. The children are born to Birthmothers, who never see them, and spend their first year in a Nurturing Center with other babies, or “newchildren,” born that year. When their children are grown, family units dissolve and adults live together with Childless Adults until they are too old to function in the society. Then they spend their last years being cared for in the House of the Old until they are finally “released” from the society. In the community, release is death, but it is never described that way; most people think that after release, flawed newchildren and joyful elderly people are welcomed into the vast expanse of Elsewhere that surrounds the communities. Citizens who break rules or fail to adapt properly to the society’s codes of behavior are also released, though in their cases it is an occasion of great shame. Everything is planned and organized so that life is as convenient...

Words: 18773 - Pages: 76

Premium Essay

Learning Theory

...Beginning theory An introduction to literary and cultural theory Second edition Peter Barry © Peter Barry 1995, 2002 ISBN: 0719062683 Contents Acknowledgements - page x Preface to the second edition - xii Introduction - 1 About this book - 1 Approaching theory - 6 Slop and think: reviewing your study of literature to date - 8 My own 'stock-taking' - 9 1 Theory before 'theory' - liberal humanism - 11 The history of English studies - 11 Stop and think - 11 Ten tenets of liberal humanism - 16 Literary theorising from Aristotle to Leavis some key moments - 21 Liberal humanism in practice - 31 The transition to 'theory' - 32 Some recurrent ideas in critical theory - 34 Selected reading - 36 2 Structuralism - 39 Structuralist chickens and liberal humanist eggs Signs of the fathers - Saussure - 41 Stop and think - 45 The scope of structuralism - 46 What structuralist critics do - 49 Structuralist criticism: examples - 50 Stop and think - 53 Stop and think - 55 39 Stop and think - 57 Selected reading - 60 3 Post-structuralism and deconstruction - 61 Some theoretical differences between structuralism and post-structuralism - 61 Post-structuralism - life on a decentred planet - 65 Stop and think - 68 Structuralism and post-structuralism - some practical differences - 70 What post-structuralist critics do - 73 Deconstruction: an example - 73 Selected reading - 79 4 Postmodernism - 81 What is postmodernism? What was modernism? -...

Words: 98252 - Pages: 394

Free Essay

Bloodlines of the Illuminati

...Bloodlines of Illuminati by: Fritz Springmeier, 1995 Introduction: I am pleased & honored to present this book to those in the world who love the truth. This is a book for lovers of the Truth. This is a book for those who are already familiar with my past writings. An Illuminati Grand Master once said that the world is a stage and we are all actors. Of course this was not an original thought, but it certainly is a way of describing the Illuminati view of how the world works. The people of the world are an audience to which the Illuminati entertain with propaganda. Just one of the thousands of recent examples of this type of acting done for the public was President Bill Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union address. The speech was designed to push all of the warm fuzzy buttons of his listening audience that he could. All the green lights for acceptance were systematically pushed by the President’s speech with the help of a controlled congressional audience. The truth on the other hand doesn’t always tickle the ear and warm the ego of its listeners. The light of truth in this book will be too bright for some people who will want to return to the safe comfort of their darkness. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I deal with real facts, not theory. Some of the people I write about, I have met. Some of the people I expose are alive and very dangerous. The darkness has never liked the light. Yet, many of the secrets of the Illuminati are locked up tightly simply because secrecy is a way...

Words: 206477 - Pages: 826