The Giver The Fight For Freedom Analysis

Date: February 8, 2013

The Giver: The Fight For Freedom

The challenging attempt to successfully achieve a Utopian Society, while balancing the freedom of the citizens has existed since the first civilizations. Lois Lowry’s, The Giver (1993), follows the story of a young boy named Jonas living in a supposedly utopian society as well discovering the flaws in the community’s apparent freedom and safety. The community of The Giver violates many basic human rights as set forth by the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights (1949), or UDHR, particularly Articles 16, 23 and article 19. Article 16 documents the freedom to choose whom you wish to marry, Article 23 presents everyone with the right to free choice of employment, and Article 19 allows
In the Community of The Giver the committee drafts and enforces rules. Rules made by the committee suggest unalterable ideas meaning they cannot be changed until the committee decides on changing the laws. They are groomed from a young age to have no opinion on the rules and to just follow them without question. According to the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, though, humans are entirely entitled to these feelings, and to make their own choices. “‘Oh.’ Jonas was silent for a minute. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. It wouldn 't matter for a new child 's toy. But later it does matter, doesn 't it? We don 't dare to let people make choices of their own.”(98, 99) Jonas and the Giver talk about how they do not have the ability or freedom to make choices of their own and have differing opinions. They should have these rights as written in the UDHR but do not due to the strict rule of the committee. The ability to have your own opinions essentially strives for the surviving and being an independent person, but citizens of the Community are denied this right. Citizens of the community are trained from the day they are born to follow the committee’s rules and not to question them. Also, they are no feelings in the Community’s citizens and are expected not to have feelings. “So there will
The Community’s rules violate Article 16 by taking away the right of freedom to choose spouses and have to bear children. The Community also violates Article 23. The Article speaks of having freedom to choose a line of work, which in The Community the forbid this, as the committee assigns jobs. The rules also violate Article 19 that speaks of choice and opinion, and little choices pass as being allowed in The Community. The Community strives to give their citizens freedom from, as opposed to freedom to. The Community protects their inhabitants from certain dangers, but does not give them the ability to make their own decisions freely. These people live all their lives obeying the laws simply because they do not have the will or ability to do what they think right represents. The goal of the society in The Giver not only wants to achieve a perfect utopian society where equality takes its place on the people, with the same rules and laws to obey, and no one person shall ever see danger or risk of death. The Community makes everyone the same, in order to regulate their citizen’s feelings. A person should not be required to quench his feelings, but should let them influence him and his creativity to solving his nations problems. The true way to have a striving society, is not to make everyone to have equity, but people should embrace their differences. In the