The Giver Moral Development

Unlike children’s fantasy novels, the characters in dystopian young adult and adult novels are urged to break the expectations and multitudinous rules of their oppressive societies, by instead acting on their intrinsic ethical principles and moral understandings. This motivation from personal morality at an older age is consistent with Kohlberg’s post-conventional level of moral development. The post-conventional level includes the last two stages of Kohlberg’s model in which people are driven to obtain their individual rights, as they grow to achieve the final stage of moral development in which they are driven by their own moral principles and values. The development of this final stage can be seen within Jonas, the main character of The
Jonas becomes upset because “he [has], in the memories, experienced injustice and cruelty, and he [has] reacted with rage that welled up so passionately inside him that the thought of discussing it calmly at the dinner table [is] unthinkable” (Lowry 132). Jonas is distressed when his mother expresses sadness and is quickly consoled by the rest of the family unit. Jonas’s mother quickly discards her sadness and forgets about it. Jonas, however, knows the sustained impact of true sadness and emotional pain, and “he [knows] that there [is] no quick comfort for emotions like those. These [are] deeper and they [do] not need to be told. They [are] felt” (Lowry 132). Jonas’s newfound emotional maturity helps him made decisions based on feeling rather than rules. His actions are contrived from both logic and emotion especially once he learns final truth of his community. At the end of the novel, Jonas watches his own father perform the ceremony for a New Child’s release, and he learns that the infant is killed, not simply sent away comfortably as society most members believe. Jonas is horrified and realizes that his associates do not understand the finality of death. Jonas is sickened by the thought that his father kills children who “[haven’t] had a chance to enjoy life” (Lowry 7), and that his friend Fiona kills citizens once they reach a certain age, and new meaning is given to the well-known practice of “releasing” those who break important community rules more than three times. Still, Jonas knows that his fellow citizens conformity is not entirely their fault because “[f]eelings are not a part of the life [they’ve] learned” (Lowry 153). Unlike Jonas, they are incapable of viewing moral decisions between right and wrong from an emotional standpoint because they do