Introduction
Summary of the introduction:
Spontaneously the crowd mumbled his name. “Jonas… Jonas….” Soon the mumbles had turned into whispers “Jonas. Jonas.” and the whispers became louder and faster. “JONAS! JONAS!” The woman on the stage had just announced Jonas undertaking as the Receiver of Memory. He was overwhelmed with gratitude and pride, but at the same time he was filled with fear: ”He did not know what he was to become”(The giver, preface)
The moment your brain spontaneously starts asking questions and you begin to sense a genuine feeling of curiosity. That is when you know that you are hooked. My attention was inescapably caught. The author Lois Lowry uses her writing skills to raise as many interesting questions as possible during the short preface of less than one page. Who is Jonas? Why was he selected? What is the role of the Receiver of Memory? And finally; what was Jonas to become? As all these questions were flowing through my mind, the world around me stopped for a second. I forgot about listening to my neighbour’s dog barking and instead, I could only hear the progressively louder shouts coming from the excited crowd. “JONAS! JONAS! JONAS!” A sense of greatness and excitement was filling me up. After reading the preface with the knowledge that this is a dystopian novel, I predicted the rest of the book to be very exciting and at the same time far from peaceful. And as we all know, excitement and peacefulness rarely go hand in hand. I simply wanted to read more.
Characters (Jonas and the Giver)
At first glance, Jonas seems like anyone else. But as the book went on, the real Jonas was revealed. A depth was uncovered, a depth of emotions more powerful than a volcano’s eruption and an insight clearer than an icy northern lake. If I were to describe Jonas’ personality in just four words, they would be wise, zealous, emotional and perceptive. He is genuinely eager to explore life and to learn about almost anything. The community offers volunteer hours for the people, which Jonas considers an opportunity and not an obligation. But what really sets him apart from the rest of his peers, and the whole of society for that matter, is his humaneness. Even though real human connection is not permitted within this cold society, Jonas will not let anyone disconnect him from his emotions. As a result of this, the empathic tendencies he holds only grow stronger. After one year of receiving memories from the giver, his emotions had become extremely amplified. He is now very passionate about his beliefs and determined to make a change. “If everything’s the same, then there aren’t any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!”(The Giver, p.97)
The giver is one of the most interesting characters you will ever come across. His almost ancient appearance, but still fairly young age, attributes to his mysterious and almost supernatural aura. Through his memories, he is forced to experience all the positive and negative emotions of billions of people. As a consequence of this, he is very wise, but also damaged by the constant reminder of all the pain and suffering endured in the past. Because the Giver is not permitted to share his suffering with others, the pain becomes even heavier to bear. As a result of his growing pains, he has become patient, strong and wise, but sadly filled up with suffering and loneliness. “Go, The Giver would tell him tensely. I’m in pain today. Come back tomorrow.” (The Giver, p.106)
Gender equality
Something noteworthy in this dystopian society is the gender equality. First of all, gender equality is clearly shown by the fact that one’s occupation is not correlated to one’s gender. For example, Jonas’ father works as a child nurturer, which in our society is an occupation heavily dominated by women. Furthermore, there seems to be no difference between how the two genders are treated in school. Another example is that the previously selected Receiver was a girl. Still, a few differences remain. For example, girls are required to wear ribbons up to the age of nine and young boys have to wear pants with a calculator pocket. But keep in mind that these small distinctions do not correlate with any sort of difference in power. However, I reacted to one specific thing, the birth mothers. These are the women whose occupation is to produce infants for others to raise, as a result of the other adults being abstinent. After serving as child producing machines, they are assigned to low ranked occupations with little prestige. Could this be a message from Lois Lowry of how women through history have been given the role of producing children and then awfully serve as their men’s inferior housekeepers?
The utopian vision
The society’s primary goal and vision is “Sameness” as they call it, where everyone must look the same, behave the same way and everything has to be fair. Scientists even use gene modification to make people look the same. Everything is strictly regulated to achieve so called “Sameness”. For example, every family consists of a mother, a father, a son and a daughter. There is no freedom of will in, what is supposed to be, a family life. Everyone lives to serve the community through their given occupation, in Jonas case, as the Receiver. Through the memories given to Jonas, we recognize the past as a time much like ours. A time of both good and evil, of both cold and warmth. A time where people lived as humans, with their music, passion and love. But just like in our world, there were cruelties such as war and starvation. Somewhere along the line, some men must have had an idea, an idea to sacrifice what makes us human to create their envisioned utopia. But they forgot one very important question: Is experiencing pain necessary to experience joy?
Heroism
Jonas is the true hero in the novel. It takes great courage and insight to do what he did. For example, when he learned about love through the memories, he did not continue his use of pills that everyone had to take to “cure” their emotions. This was of course breaking the law, but Jonas understood what had to be done. As he kept receiving memories, he learned more and more about what being human is all about. He experienced joy, love and saw vivid colour. He came to the realization that he cannot go back to his old life again. This caused an inner conflict, he wanted to change everything, but the rest did not know any other form of life and would therefore not accept change. He finally decided to run away from the society with Gabriel, an infant he rescued from being killed. It must have been a terrifying idea to leave the safe society which he had called home for his entire life. But Jonas, a boy at no more than twelve years of age, followed his heart and escaped the twisted society while rescuing Gabriel. This took truly great courage.
A future reality?
I think that there is absolutely no possibility of the existence of a society like this one in the future, as long as it’s not forced upon the people. We value their feelings and I do not see that changing. People are not willing to give up all the joy life has to offer for the sole purpose of creating a peaceful society of “robots”. However, if a serum that would remove our emotions were to be invented, I could imagine a society like this one to rise. If we envision that the Soviet government had this medical advantage fifty years ago, perhaps we all would be living like robots today. I imagine that cruel leaders, with the desire to create their inhuman “utopia”, would not hesitate to turn the human species into a “robotic species”, and just picture the amount of power those leaders would have if the people did not have a will of their own. In summary; I think this is a possible future if we someday create a “cure” for all which makes us human.