Freedoms In The Community In The Giver By Lois Lowry

Freedoms in the Community I recently have read The Giver by Lois Lowry. The citizens of the community are missing several freedoms that are crucial to society today. The freedoms of speech, choice, and voting are all important to the way society functions today. In the book, the community members do as they are told and cannot speak out against any unjust actions they see occur. There would be upsides though. People would be at peace because they cannot be publicly hurtful towards anyone or anything people do. The only person who speaks out is the main character Jonas. He finds out that they citizens of the community are living their lives in a lie. He cannot tell anybody because that would ruin the utopia, and people would not be happy about knowing they have been living their lives in a lie. The peace would be shattered and conflict would occur. Though freedom of speech is very important, in this situation it would ruin the peace. It is the opposite of what is needed at that time.

They are told what to do, and how to do it. The committee (government) has reasons. They know that choice leads to greed, greed leads to jealousy, jealousy leads to war, and war leads to pain. During the book it is explained that the committee wanted a community with no violence, hatred, pain, or jealousy. They wanted what was best for the citizens and knew what was best for them. They know the consequences and forbid the citizens from choice. Although freedom of speech is important, in the community it is a harmful thing that needs to be avoided by the citizens of the community and should not be