Identity In The Giver

Remember a time where you felt as if you were different or unique in a good way. Does it make you feel like you are your own person? In The Giver, by Lois Lowry, Jonas’s society didn’t have the option of having their own personalities. Everyone was the same all the time. They dressed the same and ate the same thing as their neighbors each day. But one boy, in particular, Jonas, was granted the opportunity to experience choice, instead of Sameness. Jonas shows the readers that our choices sculpt who we are as an individual and make us special.
Everyone who makes their own choices are creating their own, distinctive, personalities. Once Jonas learns about how people used to make choices for themselves, he exclaims to The Giver that, “‘If everything’s
While explaining Jonas’s assignment, the Chief Elder tells the crowd that, “‘He shows all of the qualities that a Receiver must have.’” (p.62) Jonas was singled out and shined as his own self, not the person the society wanted him to be. He showed intelligence, integrity, courage, wisdom, and the Capacity to See Beyond. The Receiver has to present all of these qualities during a young age in their childhood and pursue them until the Ceremony of Twelve. Although Jonas didn’t have a clue of what his assignment would be before the ceremony, the Committee of Elders knew exactly what he might, potentially, be selected for. After he watched his father emotionlessly kill an innocent child, “Jonas felt a ripping sensation inside himself, the feeling of terrible pain clawing its way forward to emerge in a cry.” (p. 151) Before Jonas received his assignment, he didn’t know how to feel the way he did; nobody in his community did. He wasn’t aware that such feelings existed and could be felt within a person. He didn’t realize that one of his family members could do a harmful thing without showing any type of emotion. Although he knew that they couldn’t feel feelings, like him and The Giver could, he was astounded that someone would do such a thing so happily as his father did. He knew that he was killing a child, but didn’t show any type of emotion towards it. His father didn’t have a clue that it was such a harmful act. All he knew was that it was his job, and if he didn’t do his job, he might get released. Jonas felt an emotion that made his special and different from the rest; he felt