Sameness In The Giver

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Sameness is a central theme in Lois Lowry’s novel, The Giver. In her book, Lowry warns the reader of the danger of conformity by creating a utopian community that operates based on the idea of sameness. In this utopian society, individualism and the freedom of personal choices are being discouraged. Children from early ages learn that breaking rules and being different is shameful and they need to fit into their society, into the “sameness”. This society makes the people to live in numbness by ruling out their feelings, emotions, colours and everything that makes people notice the differences. This society replaced the concept of death to release. The people of Jonas’s society don’t have the perception of death; they think that people will…show more content…
In Jonas’s community, it is disgraceful to being different. Although genetic scientists were able to eradicate most facial differences but still, there are differences in Jonas’s society and it is rude to bring to the attention the differences. When Lily mentions that the pale eye of baby Gabriel is similar to Jonas; Jonas wish that his father will be chastised her. “No one mentioned such things, it was not a rule, but it was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different about individuals” (Lowry 20). After Jonas gains wisdom by having the memories that was transferred to him via the giver; he starts to be disappointed about his society and he wanted to have choices. As he notes,” If everything’s the same, then there aren’t any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things! A blue tunic, or a red one?” (Lowry 97). Lowry wants us to realize the danger of losing choices in order to gain sameness and what would happen if we ignore this issue too extreme. In our world, people who are different are targeted and singled out. We prefer heterosexual orientation and tend to ignore the other sexual orientation. As Huntly notes, “In fundamental Christianity, which seeks to eradicate differences of sexual orientation and sexual expression in favour of the “sameness” of heteronormativity” (Huntly 101). In today’s world…show more content…
Jonas’s world couldn’t accomplish sameness until they have given up all the collective memories of the past. As Jonas receive memory, he understands that with memory comes the pain, but without memory there is no true happiness because until you’re not experiencing what it feels to be in pain, you can’t appreciate the happy experiences. As the giver says, “Without the memories it’s all meaningless” (Lowry 105). With the memory also comes the wisdom, people in Jonas’s world lost vast amount of wisdom and knowledge, but they still understand the importance of wisdom because they assigned a person to receive all the memory of the past in order to advise them when it comes for making decision about important things. As giver says,” But it certainly made them aware of how they need a Receiver to contain all that pain. And knowledge” (Lowry 104). If everyone in Jonas’s world have the collective memory of the past, they obviously wouldn’t prefer to live like robots because they would understand the true meaning of love, pain, happiness and deaths and what it means to be a human. People in Jonas’s world can’t even appreciate the harmony and painless society they are living in because they never felt pain. People in Jonas’s world kills the children without knowing what they are doing because they don’t have the concept of death. The moment of awakening for Jonas to take action against his community was when he

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