Euthanasia In The Giver

Suffering is everywhere, people have cancer, children are starving and others are drowning in poverty. Is it ever okay to help people end their suffering? In the book The Giver Lois Lowry conveys a world that is visualized as a utopia until Jonas, a twelve, who just got assigned his job and is now being trained by the Giver to be the next receiver of memory unravels the truth. The Giver and Jonas feel it is unjust that none of the citizens can feel emotions or see color as they do, so they make a plan to escape with an infant Gabriel, releasing all of the memories to the people. The novel is not promoting the idea of euthanasia, but rather showing the consequences of using it. In The Giver they release newchildren, the old, and they even use it as punishment.

In The Giver the community always has a certain amount of newchildren born each year to maintain the population. In the case of multiple infants born at once, the lighter one(s) get released. “He killed it! My father killed it! Jonas said to himself, stunned at

In The Giver a person has three chances until they are released, every time a person is given a warning they undergo a consequence that suits the infraction. In the beginning of the book Jonas describes an event that happened a year ago. A pilot-in-raining had made a wrong turn, “NEEDLESS TO SAY HE WILL BE RELEASED, the voice had said, followed by silence.” (p. 2) the speaker had informed the citizens that after making this wrong turn the pilot would be killed for his mistakes, which is similar to a technique we have. In our society we have the death penalty, the death penalty is a way to discipline major crimes. This is similar to the way they use it in the book. This technique is uncompassionate, because ending a life is too harsh a punishment for the offenses made by the citizens. The people deserve to at least have a life living in a place of