The Power of Memories
“It’s just that… without the memories it’s all meaningless.” (Lowry). Jonas’s community has control of everything, he lives in a seemingly perfect world, but that’s because one person bears all of the hurt and sorrow their ancestors ever endured, but that one person also experiences the real joy that comes with those memories. The Community tries to hide all memories from their citizens, but it has it consequences. The people aren’t really human anymore; they are numb to sentiment. In the novel the Giver by Lois Lowry, Jonas learns how people can’t have real emotions without memories by experiencing true sorrow, true joy, and true love.
In Jonas’s community, people always express their feelings, but when they say they’re sad, they aren’t truly somber. The citizens’ lives are made so that they never experience real
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According to Jonas’s parents, people enjoy each other's’ presence, but nobody really loves one another. Because Jonas has access to all of the memories, he learns what love is and how the community has banned one of the most important feelings of all. With this in mind, after the Giver shared his favorite memory with Jonas, Jonas admitted, “‘I couldn’t quite get the word for the whole feeling of it, the feeling that was so strong in the room.’ ‘Love,’ The Giver told him.” (Lowry). The memory that the Giver had shared with Jonas was a memory of a family gathering on Christmas, which radiated great love between the family members. However, Jonas’s community has disposed of love by making all of the citizens take a pill that smothers their feelings. After receiving the memory of Christmas, Jonas decides to stop taking the pill because he wants to experience love himself. Jonas thinks that getting rid of love is a terrible thing, but the community had to do it because love posed yet another risk of corruption for the perfect