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The Consequences Of Love In The Giver By James Baldwin

708 Words3 Pages

The poem The Giver by James Baldwin is a poem about giving your love away, and the consequences of giving. Baldwin is more known for his novels and short stories, but his poems are much more powerful than them. The Giver, describes the authors internal struggle in which he is trying to love everyone, but he feels guilty since he cannot fulfill this task. James Baldwin depicts how the human desire to love, is the strongest emotion in The Giver.

Baldwin starts the poem with the first stanza, which tells the general message behind the poem. He begins:
“If the hope of giving is to love the living, the giver risks madness in the act of giving.”
This describes people that love others as “the givers”. The givers are in danger of madness when they …show more content…

Lines 7-8 states, “Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted, / what gift would give them the gift to be gifted?” These lines, dive deeper into the mind of Baldwin, where he list the categories of people that may need his love. The countless number of people that need help with financial, emotionally, mentally, and even physically assistance, all could benefit greatly with his gift of his love. Then with the next line, he is uncertain of how he can help these people. How could he give something to help these people. The gift he doesn’t know that he could give, is his love. Living in this life right now, there are so many needs we are asked to fulfil like Baldwin. How would we know where to focus this precious love that we exclusively have? This love and affection he speaks of, would restore the faith, and happiness that these people had once lost. Likewise, in the Lines 9-10, he describes how the givers are much alike of the receivers, “The giver is no less adrift / than those who are clamouring for the gift.” These lines open to the reader that those who are in need, suffer the same fate of the those give their love. Both groups are lost, and unsure how to solve the issue at hand. The giver does not know what to give, and the needy do not who will give what to help their situation. Baldwin uses the word adrift to describe how they not in control of the circumstances. This stanza is the introduction of internal struggle of the narrator, and how he is unsure of to resolve the condition of

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