Imagine never knowing what color is, always seeing different shades of gray. Imagine never learning what sunshine or snow is. Well, this was the life of Jonas and everyone in his community. This was the way Jonas lived until he became a Receiver of Memory and learned about Sameness. In Lois Lowry’s dystopian novel, The Giver, Jonas challenges his society’s demands for Sameness through trying to transmit memories from before Sameness to others and escaping his society to go to Elsewhere, because he can no longer handle this view on his society.
Jonas challenges his society’s demands for Sameness through transmitting memories from the past to others. Toward the middle of the novel, Jonas learns many things from the past and wants to show his family how good the times were before Sameness came into rule. Jonas sees his little sister with her comfort object, a stuffed
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“With all of his being he tried to give to give each of them a piece of the memory: not of the tortured cry of the elephant, but of the being” (Lowry 101). Jonas wanted to show his sister and father that all of the animals that are comfort toys were based on were real animals that were around before Sameness came into rule. It just so happened to be that Lily’s comfort toy was an elephant, and Jonas had received memories of elephants from The Giver earlier that day. One day, Jonas has Gabriel sleep in his room and transfers him a memory which helps him fall asleep. As an experiment, Jonas decides to have Gabriel sleep in his room to see if he will be able to sleep better there, but as Jonas attempts to lull Gabriel back to sleep, although “He was not aware of giving the memory”, he “kept it