The Giver Essay
The Community that Lois Lowry creates in The Giver appears to be a utopia, but is in fact a dystopia. To get rid of the extremes, such as pain and hunger, you have to get rid of things like true friendship and happiness.
Jonas is constructed to convey ideas about society by his speech, thoughts, actions, appearance, interaction with others and his name. We first see this when his sister, Lily says to him, “He has funny eyes just like you Jonas!” Most people in the community have dark eyes but a few have pale eyes. This is because The Community is trying to get sameness, by making everyone have the same eye colour. The next thing we read is that when he is playing a simple game of catch with his best friend Asher, the apple they are playing with changes for a second it seems to Jonas. When he asks Asher about it Asher doesn’t see anything strange. This is when Jonas is first seeing colour. Colour has been taken out of The Community because it creates individualism and creativity, which could create envy or jealousy, and jeopardise equality. Another idea is precision of language, which in fact is very imprecise. We see this when Jonas asks his parents “Do you love me?” he is then laughed at and chastised for using such “imprecise” language, and is recommended to say “Do you enjoy me?” instead. This is because The Community wants the people to be non confrontational and does not condone the expression of real feelings, it is almost vague. We also see that his name, Jonas in the bible means “To bring misfortune and a great tempest on his companions”
Lily and Asher are constructed to portray ideas about the society that they live in, by their speech, actions, appearance, interaction with others and Lily’s name. One example is when Lily tells her family “ I felt angry because someone broke the play area rules” while Lily did not feel anger, but shallow impatience and exasperation. This is a perfect example of how imprecise the language actually was, because the
Jonas is constructed to convey ideas about society by his speech, thoughts, actions, appearance, interaction with others and his name. We first see this when his sister, Lily says to him, “He has funny eyes just like you Jonas!” Most people in the community have dark eyes but a few have pale eyes. This is because The Community is trying to get sameness, by making everyone have the same eye colour. The next thing we read is that when he is playing a simple game of catch with his best friend Asher, the apple they are playing with changes for a second it seems to Jonas. When he asks Asher about it Asher doesn’t see anything strange. This is when Jonas is first seeing colour. Colour has been taken out of The Community because it creates individualism and creativity, which could create envy or jealousy, and jeopardise equality. Another idea is precision of language, which in fact is very imprecise. We see this when Jonas asks his parents “Do you love me?” he is then laughed at and chastised for using such “imprecise” language, and is recommended to say “Do you enjoy me?” instead. This is because The Community wants the people to be non confrontational and does not condone the expression of real feelings, it is almost vague. We also see that his name, Jonas in the bible means “To bring misfortune and a great tempest on his companions”
Lily and Asher are constructed to portray ideas about the society that they live in, by their speech, actions, appearance, interaction with others and Lily’s name. One example is when Lily tells her family “ I felt angry because someone broke the play area rules” while Lily did not feel anger, but shallow impatience and exasperation. This is a perfect example of how imprecise the language actually was, because the