Divorce In The Giver

In the United States, nearly half of the population has dealt with divorce. It started on

1857 Matrimonial Causes Act, which allowed ordinary people to divorce. In 1969 was the big change, the U.S created the Divorce Reform Act which allows couples to divorce after they had been separated for two years. In her novel, Lowry deals with divorce through her creations of arranged marriages in Jonas’s society; ultimately, she shows that this society was not successful because of the severe control by the elders which led to unhappiness to the society. For the past several years, divorce has affected many children. According to Robert E. Emery, divorce has affected children by “ having immense amount of stress, increasing the risk that children will suffer from psychological and behavioral problems, causing resiliency, and having painful memories and ongoing worries” (1) . As you can see, divorce plays a major role on children. When people parents get divorced, the children start to face

Because divorce deals with marriage, the Giver also deals with that as well. What the Lois Lowry suggest about this issue through Jonas’s society is that he states in the book, “The Matching of Spouses and the Naming and Placement of new children, the Assignments were scrupulously thought through by the Committee of Elders” (Lowry 48). What Lois Lowry is trying to say is divorce is something that is not good for the society. He states that Matching of Spouses is runned by the Committee of Elders. What I can infer is that Lois Lowry prefers having arranged marriages more than the real world’s which is having adults choose who they want to get married to. Because Jonas’s is a Utopian Society they want to make sure that the people are doing what they are suppose to being and that everyone is equally balanced. As you can see, The Giver by Lois Lowry enforces more towards arranged marriages than love