In the novel The Giver, the author, Lois Lowry creates a community into which Jonas, the main character, is inserted. This community has never felt worry, had a choice, or felt an emotion. I would not want to live in Jonas’s community. There, everything and everyone is the same and someone makes choices for you. I want to be different and make my own choices. I want to feel emotion because that is what makes life worth living.
The community sacrificed emotions so nobody would get hurt. An example of this is found on pages 108 and 109. The text reads, “He fell with his leg twisted under him, and could hear the crack of a bone.” This is one of the memories of pain that the Giver gives to Jonas, because the community cannot handle the emotion of pain. Another example is on page 174. It reads, “It became a struggle to ride the bicycle as Jonas weakened from lack of food… His ankle throbbed as he forced the pedal down in an effort that was almost beyond him.” Jonas encounters pain and hunger when he flees the community for elsewhere.
The community sacrificed choice so nobody would make the wrong one. An example of this is found on page 98. It states, “ What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And choose wrong? Or what if they could choose their own jobs?” In this passage, Jonas and the Giver discuss the danger of choice and how people could get hurt if they made the wrong one. Another passage is found on page 174. It states, “Once he had yearned for choice. Then, when he had a choice he had made the wrong one: the choice to leave.” In this passage Jonas realizes how dangerous choice can be, and debates if he made the right one, because he is now starving, lonely, and injured.
The community sacrificed difference so everything would be predictable and the same. An example of this is found on page 84. The text states, “ He waved his hand as if a gesture had caused the hills to disappear, ‘sameness’ he concluded.” In this passage the Giver tells Jonas how they took away all differences like weather and landscape to make things more predictable. Another example comes on page 100. The passage states, “There had been a time when flesh had different colors. Two of these men had dark brown skin; the others were light.” This passage occurs when Jonas has the memory of the elephant, and he sees the men with the different, darker skin, a hue that no longer exists in the community.
Jonas’s community offers a worry free community, but they do not let you live your life the way I would want to live mine. I think they are too controlling and this is why I do not want to live in Jonas’s community, ever!
