Diversity In The Giver

Making choices make the world unique. Everyone makes different choices everyday. Whether it is choosing to eat an apple or an orange or choosing to brush one’s teeth in the morning, having the freedom of choice gives one character. Imagine a world where the government made choices for everyone. There would be no freedom. There would be no individualism. There would be no diversity. In the book,”The Giver” by Lois Lowry, the government decides on what people wear, language-use, spouse, and their job as well. The main character Jonas has been used to “Sameness” all his life. The Sameness made everything plain, boring, ordinary. People were not even allowed to see colors. Jonas did not know the true importance of the ability to make a choice for oneself. He thought that making choices would be dangerous. There are some benefits to having the government decide on everyone’s choices, but not many. Limited choices could prevent crime and possibly poverty. But if
Imagine if everyone had the same house and the same bicycle. There would be no diversity. People would not be able to express themselves in the way that they wanted to, only the way that the government chose for them. Over time in “The Giver”, the inability to choose made the people of the community lack emotion. They did not care about what other people thought about them. For example, Jonas once said, “I certainly liked the memory, though. I can’t see why it’s your favorite. I couldn’t quite get the word for the whole feeling of it, the feeling that was so strong in the room.” Then the Giver replied to him, “Love”(157). This shows that until Jonas became the Receiver of Memory he was mostly incapable of having true emotions such as love, the strongest emotion on Earth. Only a fixed, controlling society could make others feel this way. It takes away the emotion, the love, the colors. It takes away what makes us