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The Giver Color Analysis

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Imagine this, you are sitting in a movie theater watching an old, yet classic, movie. The movie was made in the year 1928, so there is no color in this movie other than plain old black and white. You finish your movie and get up to leave when you realize everything is black and white. You desperately close your eyes and shake your head violently. You open your eyes, but still there is no color anywhere. Every color you had ever seen was gone. What if you never saw color again? What if no one could see color? Could humanity bear such a cold, dreary world? In Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver all citizens are unable to see color; however, these citizens do not understand or know what color is. They are simply never given the opportunity to see color. …show more content…

In The Giver this is exactly what happens, and Lois Lowry reveals this in a rather startling way. The main character Jonas is selected to receive all of the memories of the past so that he may provide wisdom when important decisions must be made. Some of the memories he is given introduce him to color. Jonas has never seen color before and begins bombarding his mentor with questions about color. “Why can’t everyone see them? Why did colors disappear?” (Lowry 95). His mentor, The Giver, explains to Jonas that people long ago decided to get rid of colors, hills, mountains, different skin colors, and all of this diversity to enable them to move towards something known as “Sameness”. Sameness meant that there were no more colors, everyone had the same skin color, all terrain was completely flat, and there was simply as little diversity as possible. While this may seem quite absurd the logic and thinking behind it makes sense, yet it is very strongly opinionated. The thought is that if one could do away with differences there would be no more conflict. While this may prove effect, what would be the point if every human being lived the exact same life? How would society ever become better than it was the day before? Unfortunately, society couldn’t progress and there is would be little point in

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