Individuality In The Giver

Utopian worlds always backfire because people crave their own individuality.In Lois Lowry’s novel, The Giver, the leaders of the community control the citizens by keeping them ignorant and avoiding uniqueness. The Elders of the community try to keep the people from making decisions because they believe that it will make people's’ lives easier. At the age of 12 The Elders assign all the citizens jobs and a young boy, named Jonas, is given the honor of being selected the new receiver. During The Giver the Utopian world that the people live in fails because people naturally crave individuality.
Throughout the novel, The Giver, The Elders of the community try to create a perfect world where people aren’t exposed to the negative parts of life.

The leaders of the society ruin the people’s identity by not giving them choices and not exposing them to joyful feeling like love. While Jonas is talking to to the Giver about choices he says, “Well if everything’s the same, then there aren’t any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!”(97) The Elders try to make the people’s life simpler by eliminating the freedom of choice. Since people naturally want to be different from each other, the sameness bothers hims. Jonas and The Giver are talking about how there can’t be twins in the community; “The Giver's face took on a solemn look. "I wish they wouldn't do that," he said quietly, almost to himself. "Well, they can't have two identical people around! Think how confusing it would be!" Jonas chuckled.” (146) The community releases the lighter twin of the set because it would be too confusing to have two identical people around and that would make it hard for the people. The lighter twin has to suffer through the pain of dying just so that the people’s lives can be “easier.” The community also doesn’t get to live with that twin and experience the benefits that he might have for society. After receiving the memory about love Jonas says, “I liked the feeling of love,” he confessed He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. “ wish we still