The Giver Society Vs Society

“When you receive the memories, You have the capacity to see beyond.” said The Giver when he explained the job of being the receiver to Jonas, in Lois Lowry’s The Giver. In the novel The Giver, the main character Jonas lives in a bland, boring community where everyone is the same. When he receives the assignment of being the receiver he realizes how disappointing the life he is living is once he gets memories from The Giver, of how life used to be. He lives in a society that is very different from ours in many different ways. Three main differences between Jonas’s society and society today are family, rules/consequences and colors. Family has an important influence on a person’s life. In Jonas’s society, family units are very different than in society today. The Committee of Elders determine when spouses are assigned and when families receive children.

Colors are and show up in our daily lives. Around in Society today, colors give us options to explore and express our creativity around us. In Jonas’s community, Color is strange and difficult to grasp the concept of, simply because no one is used to noticing it around them. When The Giver transmits a memory of color to Jonas, Jonas questions The Giver, “But now that I can see colors, at least sometimes, I was just thinking: what if we could hold up things that were bright red, or bright yellow, and we could chose? Instead of the Sameness” (Lowry 98). This quote justifies that the memory of color no longer exists in Jonas’s society because of sameness. Unlike Jonas’s society, our society has colors all around us to keep us entertained and show our daily lives. When Jonas first starts to realize colors and sees an apple, he questions Asher “Does anything seem strange to you? About the apple?” (Lowry 23-24). This quote explains how Jonas’s is getting early signs of colors around him. What would today’s society be like if everything was dull and