The Importance of Individuality in The Giver Essay Example

📌Category: Books, The Giver
📌Words: 566
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 26 April 2022

Can you imagine a life without differences, where everyone's the same? Can you envision a life with no sense of individuality, where everyones a copy of each other? In Lois Lowry's novel, The Giver, readers learn about Jonas, the main character, and his life in his community. Every aspect of his life is planned out from getting a bike at nine to getting a job at twelve. Once Jonas was assigned the role of Receiver of Memory, his life changed forever. Through this assignment, Jonas learns the truth about the past and readers uncover the most valuable lesson in the novel: the importance of being an individual. 

To begin, Lois Lowry shows readers the importance of being an individual after a child dies and is easily replaced. Jonas was attending the first day of the December Ceremony. A child named Caleb had died by falling into a river, so at this ceremony his parents were getting a replacement child. A replacement child is a child with the same name as someone's past child who passed away. During the Ceremony, “...the little Four seemed to fade away gradually from everyone’s consciousness…the couple stood on the stage with the newchild. It was as if the first Caleb was returning” (Lowry 56-57). Caleb was only four years old when he passed away. During the ceremony, the community who once forgot Caleb chose to remember him again. His parents accepted the replacement child without a second thought. Lois Lowry even wrote he was “returning”. Caleb should have never been seen as replaceable, for he was not an object. Caleb was an individual with feelings.  This shows that the community did not value him as a person. He deserved to be recognized, appreciated, and remembered after his death. This is an example of why being an individual is important.  

Furthermore, Jonas found out that the sudden changes he had been seeing when he looked at certain things was the color red. Giver tells him that the community many generations ago gave up color. Since then, they live in a black and white world where everyone is supposed to be the same. Giver says, “‘I suppose the genetic scientists are still hard at work trying to work the kinks out. Hair like Fiona’s must drive them crazy” (Lowry 120). People in Jonas’s community can only see in black and white. They cannot see red, orange, blue, etc. The community wants everyone to look and be the same, but differences in appearance makes them unique. In real life people with red hair are seen as unique and rare, but in his community the scientists see it as an imperfection. Fiona's hair color just makes her even more special and unique, not strange or weird. If everyone looked and acted the same we would be eachothers copies. Having an appearance you like enhances the feeling of being your own person. You can decide what you want to look like and how you want to be seen. Being able to choose how you look plays a key role in being an individual.  

In conclusion, Lois Lowry educates readers on the value of individuality. This theme is evident when we see what the community did post Calebs death, and when we learn people are genetically modified to look the same. In life, people are all individuals, different and special in their own way. In Jonas’s community, people are meant to all fit in one mold. They are seen as replaceable and individuality is unheard of. This shows readers just how important being an individual truly is. Individuality is the most important theme in The Giver, by Lois Lowry. 

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