The Giver by Lois Lowry Book Analysis

Imagine a world where life is colorless and dull, the days roll on emptily. You dread the morning, where you are ripped from sleep and forced to start the day. Once you are into the day it feels as though the time slips away. I would love to say this world is unfamiliar to me, but that would be a lie. I have never been in a literal gray world, but my muddled mind understands the lack of happiness or know-how. I understand the feeling of fog and lack of meaning like no other. If you find yourself understanding what I mean then I am sorry for what you have been through, but this is not about you. This is about Jonas from The Giver and the hollow, lonely society that he lives in. Most YA dystopian books show us a general disconnect from happiness or fulfillment, but The Giver has an extreme take on this dystopian view. Jonas experiences this colorless world all by himself. Both versions of The Giver show us that their society lacks love, diversity, and freedom, along with color. This ranges from freedom to express their feelings, heritage, and speech. The Giver paints us a bleak, gray picture of the truth behind YA dystopian societies, and the detachment that they have from our very own society.

Jonas filled with raging hormones once he got off his medicine, but even before then his heart yearned for the understanding of love and passion. His colorless world changed, allowing him to understand the importance of emotions and the need for love. His society took away feelings to avoid the passion and pain that comes from love. The problem with this is that taking away love, and emotions in general, keeps them from feeling authentic happiness. The society they live in pressures them to “be okay” by taking away their chance to not be okay. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet once said, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” In other words, they need to feel agony and misery to be able to fully experience life. In the book, Jonas, after experiencing a memory of love, says “I liked the feeling of love”(Lowry, 98). This is a beautiful example of how love affects Jonas’s views on the world, though he does continue to say that love would make life confusing. In the movie, Jonas says, “With love comes faith and hope”, which can be applied to not only him but his society as a whole. I know that I went through a dark time in my short life, where I could not express happiness. I felt alone and cold to the world around me. I feel as though Jonas and I felt the same way, frozen in place while the robotic humming of the world swarmed around us. In both versions of The Giver, the importance of love, and emotion in general, shines through because “what is the point of existing if you cannot feel”?

The real world bursts with diversity in language, religion, race, style, and more. In the giver, though the movie does show differences in skin color, many of the other types of diversity have been smothered from existence. At the very beginning of the movie, Jonas is talking about color and change, then the story reverts to the beginning where The Elder Chief is talking about equality and sameness within their community. In the book, it is not until chapter seven that The Elder Chief addresses their sameness by saying, “You Elevens have spent all your years till now learning to fit in… to curb any impulses that might set you apart from the group. But today we honor your differences”(Lowry, 51-52). By differences, The Elder Chief means their difference in future career paths, and that is strictly the only difference she is addressing. This happens to be the only difference that they celebrate or even appreciated throughout their society. After the ceremony takes place the new “adults” are expected to still follow the rules and stay inside the lines. This once again shows the control and lack of diversity within the community. The restrictions of language also pop up in the book, and movie, quite a bit. In the book(Lowry, 60), The Elder Chief apologizes for “causing anxiety within the community” and the community responds by saying, “We accept your apology”, which is what they are forced to say after every apology. This concept refers back to their lack of emotion, they do not feel so they do not have to process whether they want to accept an apology. Once Jonas can feel emotion, we see him struggle with accepting apologies, and even apologizing because he can tell whether he means what he is saying. This reminds me of how society in real life is expecting us to act, dress, and talk a certain way; otherwise, we are viewed poorly by others. This idea of “precision of language” and the rules of the community is meant to keep the community safe, but the overwhelming sameness of each person is terrifying to witness.