The Giver Color Analysis

Lois Lowry, a Newbery Award winning author once said, “I’ve never been a writer of fairy tales. And if I’ve learned anything through that river of memories, it is that we can’t live in a walled world, in an ‘only us, only now’ world where we are all the same and feel safe. We would have to sacrifice too much.” In her novel The Giver there is a common message of sameness. It is in how people in the community dressed. It is how they looked. Their clothing and haircuts were always the same. Little girls wore ribbons and braids in their hair. It is also how they acted, and how they lived. If anyone said a wrong word, or did something wrong, they would be punished, sometimes to the point of a “release”. All the same, and never different. The elders
For starters, color could create emotion, which the creators did not want. According to The Giver text, it says, “‘We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences’” (95). Seeing color could make people feel emotions like happiness, passion, and love, but that’s not what the creators of the community wanted, so the relinquished it. They made the choice to go to sameness, which took away people’s ability to feel emotion. People thought they were feeling emotions like anger, but their minds were really tricking them into thinking that. Next, they did not want color because it showed people’s physical differences. For example, a person's skin tone. “‘There was a time, actually―you’ll see this in memories later―when flesh was many colors. That was before we went to Sameness,’” claims the novel The Giver. To them, seeing different skin tones, was showing a difference in physical features. Some people in the world have a lighter skin tone, which is most of the people, but there are some people that have a darker skin tone, and sometimes they are treated differently because of it. Which leads into the next reason. Color can show some people are better than others, like royalty. For example, someone who was poor might not have as nice of clothing as someone who was wealthier. The color purple can symbolize royalty, and can show wealth. Therefore, the
First, it says, “‘Climate Control. Show made growing food difficult…’” (83). The creators of the community wanted to be able to grow an endless supply of food wherever they wanted to, and with snow in the winter time, it made the ground cold, and hard, meaning that it was very difficult to do. Next, snow also limited when you could grow the food. For example, “‘Snow...limited the agricultural periods’” (83). The community leaders also wanted to grow food whenever they wanted. They did not want snow to limit when they grew their crops, and because snow is unpredictable, you can never know exactly when it will come, and if you plant crop, and are just ready to harvest it, and then a snow storm comes and kills it, you would be pretty mad. Lastly, it made transportation very difficult, which was a vital aspect of their community. “‘And unpredictable weather made transportation almost impossible at times. It wasn’t a practical thing, so it became obsolete when we went to Sameness,’” it claims (84). The people in their community relied on transportation. It was how they got from place to place. They used bicycles to go everywhere, and you cannot ride a bike when there is snow on the ground. Plus it would be very cold, and uncomfortable. Consequently, snow was viewed as an obstacle in their community, so the creators decided to abolish