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The Role Of The Past In The Giver, By Lois Lowry

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Like many have done today, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” - George Santayana. As most people may well know, today’s current population live in an age of technological advancement. Never before has there been so much information at the touch of our fingertips. Some of the information we can access is history. What happened a hundred years ago or why did the french revolution ever begin? These questions can be answered as easily by searching it in an address bar on your browser. However, even though we have all the information we can get from the past, why is that we still make the mistakes that were previously made years ago. In the book, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, the “past” plays a crucial role in the book, but how does our “past” play a role in our society. That is the question to be answered. …show more content…

To begin with, in The Giver the only person or two people at most that have knowledge of the past and of history are the Receiver of Memory, Jonas, and the giver. Originally what was supposed to happen was for the Receiver of Memory to be the only person that was to have memories of the past. He or she would then advise and help the Council of Elders when they request for help. What happened in the book was Jonas ran from the community with the help of the Giver. This in turn left everyone back in the community with memories both good and

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994 Words | 4 Pages

Have you ever wondered if there could possibly be a community where no one has any idea of normal everyday things? Well then the Giver is just one example. The Giver has a long history, and it all started with Lois Lowry’s dad and how he forgot his memory of any bad thing and Lois Lowry started thinking what a Community would be like without any painful memories and she came up with The Giver. The Giver revolves around a young boy named Jonas who was chosen to be the new Receiver of Memory which is the highest honor in his community. While Jonas is training he gets all of the memories that everyone else in the community has and then starts to think why can’t other people have these memories he then comes up with a plan to escape the community

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476 Words | 2 Pages

In the Giver, the writer, Lois Lowry reveals the theme through talking about an old profession in being the receiver of memory.. The theme of tradition is reinforced in the Giver through the character development of Jonas, a young boy chosen to do the job of the receiver. Jonas is chosen to be the receiver of memory a job in which he is given memories from, “Before the previous receiver and generations before him,”(77). This quote reveals how even having a receiver of memory is a very old tradition as it is said that they have been there for generations.

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At first The Giver warns Jonas that this process of receiving memories “will be painful”(Lowery 85). This pain comes in the form of both the joyful and the terrifying memories. The positive memories that he receives cause him pain because they make him see how much happier the people in his community could be. “Jonas’s realizations about the constraints of this rigidly organized life come gradually", but they begin to weigh on him (Chamberlain). Everytime he learns something new about the past he is overcome by the will to share all of his mental experiences with the rest of the population, but he knows he is not able to do this.

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The Giver’s job is to show Jonas all the memories from the past and to teach him how to guide the Council of Elders using the memories that the Giver passes to him. Throughout the

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524 Words | 3 Pages

Is it better to have liberty or being sheltered. It’s better to have liberty because, with having liberty you 're allowed to have your own ideas and thoughts. To where being sheltered you 're only allowed to think what they want you to think and live how they want you to live. I have three examples in: The Giver, Civil Rights Movement, and the American Revolution these components demonstrates why, it 's better to have liberty than to being sheltered. In the book, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, a boy named Jonas lives in a sheltered community.

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290 Words | 2 Pages

An author named Lois Lowry wrote a book called The Giver. The Giver is about is about a boy named Jonas, and he doesn’t always like sameness like everyone else in his community. Jonas thought his community was perfect, but he soon realizes the dark secrets about his community. Jonas experiences developes the theme over the course over the story by teaching the reader that the truth hurts. The truth hurts because you find out things you don’t want to know about.

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1095 Words | 5 Pages

The government in The Giver is based on keeping information from the members of the Community and using deception to control the society. Jonas is exposed to the truth through receiving the memories from The Giver. The government relies on The Giver and The Receiver to keep the secrets of the old ways and prevent the members of the Community from rebelling. The Elders do not allow the members of the Community to know the truth of the releasings because it would cause the Community to know too much and have too much power. The leaders of the Community trick the members of the Community into thinking that they are able to make decisions, when in reality they are living a life void of free will.

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Literary Analysis: The Giver Imagine a world where everything seems perfect but truly it is not as pleasant as it appears. In The Giver by Lois Lowry shows us a community in the future with no feelings at all. Jonas a twelve year old boy knows his life as it is and one evening he learns the truth about the community. Jonas set’s off into a adventure to change it all. Character,conflict,and symbolism makes the reader see thru the eyes of a twelve year old in a place of slavery disguised without anyone knowing it.

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A gray, boring, mundane life in the society of The Giver provides safety, though what lies behind the ruthless doors of release, something only a heartless criminal could achieve. Within the dystopian community of The Giver by Lois Lowry, Jonas the protagonist and Receiver of Memory realizes his community is oblivious by not given any choices, but to follow the rules, or else, to perish. In this surprisingly terrifying novel, Lowry implies a constant theme of sameness creating protection and safety ,but when people’s choices, diversity, and memories are taken away, citizens lose the right of equality and only endure a monotonous robot like lifestyle. . Throughout the Giver, people commanded and stalked by the government, but still follow all of the absurd laws that create a corrupt society.

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826 Words | 4 Pages

On chapter 18, page 143, the giver tells Jonas about the previous receiver, it says that , “Rosemary left here that day, left this room and did not go back to her dwelling. I was notified by the speaker that she had gone directly to the chief elder and asked to be released.” the Giver told Jonas that once Rosemary got released, and the memories were released too. So Jonas thought that if Rosemary released the memories, he thought that he could too, to make the memories go back to the people, so he asked the giver. On chapter 21, page 163, it says that, “ That night, Jonas was forced to fee.

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Furthermore, memories allow the community to gain wisdom from remembering experiences of the past. Moreover, the Giver disagrees with how the community runs things. He believes that memories should be experienced by everyone as well, because life is meaningless without memories. The Giver states: “There are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they

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374 Words | 2 Pages

“The idea of a perfect world is imperfect,” but this wasn't what was thought of in Jonas’s community, they strived for one thing, and one thing only, perfection. In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the biggest flaw in Jonas’s community is their senseless attempts to create a perfect society; this is done by the wiping of memories and the even the deaths of imperfect babies. In Jonas’s community, they have an absurd idea of wiping away memories ;like sorrow and war. It had only been a few days since Jonas had received the chilling memory of war, on the day of the unscheduled holiday, Jonas finds Asher playing war and he has a mental breakdown, remembering the memory,“You have no way of knowing this… but it is a cruel game… in the past,” (pg 134).

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790 Words | 4 Pages

This quote shows that there is only one person who contains all the memories. In Jonas’s community, unlike society today, people have their own memories and memories from other people that have shared them. If The Giver’s memories were released it would cause the community terrible pain. According to the novel, The Giver stated, “‘It was chaos,” he stated. “They really suffered for a while.

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517 Words | 3 Pages

The most important assignment in the community. He must receive memories from the current receiver. The chief elder made the decision to make only one person bear the burden of the memories. Everyone thinks the community is perfect, a utopia, but Jonas sees all the flaws .Jonas changes throughout The Giver and as a result, tries to change the community.

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1595 Words | 7 Pages

I have read the novel, “The Giver”, written by the famous American writer Lois Lowry. This book was written under author’s impression after visiting her aging father in the hospital, who had lost his long term memory. The idea of the book is the importance of memory. The novel is set in a society which seems like utopian, in this society there is no hunger, sadness, or misery. However this utopian society is held from experiencing true emotions.

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