Theme Of Hunger In The Giver

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In Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver, Jonas lives in a seemingly peaceful world where there are never any problems, whether major or minor. There are Ceremonies for the children, rules that the people have to follow, and “release” for the Old or anyone else. However, as Jonas begins his training with the Receiver, who is the person who has all the memories, Jonas begins to understand how citizens gave up their freedom in exchange for peace, which is not ethical according to Jonas. One problem that the members of the Community avoid is the concept of world hunger, which is caused by a variety of things including discrimination and poverty. Nevertheless, even though the concept of world poverty may be too great a problem to resolve, there are still many ways as to stem off this conflict. There are essentially five things that contribute to the concept of world hunger. These things are usually known as poverty, armed conflict, environmental overload, discrimination, and lack of clout. When people have no money, they are not …show more content…

One solution is explained in The Giver. The Giver, during Jonas’s training, explains about making a decision about an increase in births for a Birthmother, stating, “And the strongest memory that came was hunger. It came from many generations back. Centuries back. The population had gotten so big that hunger was everywhere. Excruciating hunger and starvation.” One of the solutions in the novel is also when each family is given a specific amount of food so that everyone in the Community gets their fair share of food. Another solution in the novel is that the Community controls the population by exempting each Birthmother to only three births and for each age group to contain at most fifty children. This solution, however, is not ethical, since it eliminates many of the population down to a specific number and that some people need more nourishment than