Independent Reading Project
The Giver
By: Louis Lowery The Book I read for my independent reading project was called “The Giver” by Louis Lowery. This book is multiple types including social science, science fiction, and utopian and dystopian fiction. The main character's name in the giver is Jonas. Jonas is a twelve year old boy who lives in a utopia. Jonas goes to the what we would call retirement home frequently to bathe old people. He goes there mainly to see Fiona one of his friends, the one he has stirrings about. The setting of “The Giver” is a utopian community that is part of a larger utopian society most likely on Earth. The time this takes place is an unspecified time in the future. Everyone in this community can not see color except for one person The Giver. In this community scientists have erased all pain, fear, war and hatred. There is never any racism because basically everyone looks and acts the same. The society has also eliminated choice including where they work, who they love, and who gives birth to the children. When people get to old to be active members of society they are “released” from the society. There are ceremonies once a year for all of the children and Jonas is doing the ceremony of the twelve. The ceremony of the twelve is where the kids are assigned their careers one by one in alphabetical order. When it comes to Jonas he is skipped and starts to worry why. At the end of the ceremony jonas is finally called and his job is to become the next “Giver”. This job is not called every year the last time it was called was 10 years ago. There are several major conflicts in The Giver one of them being man vs. nature. The reason for this conflict is that man is trying to overcome what nature does by not having it be present. Another conflict is man vs. himself this i believe it the biggest conflict because Jonas tries to do what is best for his society because he has grown up thinking it is perfect. Once he starts to receive memories from the Giver he realizes how wrong their “utopia” really is. There are a lot of things i really enjoyed in “The Giver” one of them being that Louis Lowery uses such detail to describe what Jonas is feeling when he receives the memories from the Giver. The thing I did not enjoy about my novel was that the end of it just leaves us hanging about if Jonas and Gabriel actually find another society or if it was just a dream.
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