Sameness In The Giver

The idea of a perfect society might sound appealing, but would a perfect society include Sameness? In the novel, The Giver by Lois Lowery, Jonas, the main character, lives in a society where everyone portrays Sameness. Sameness is where everything is equal. For example, every family has four people: a mother and a father, one boy and one girl. Jonas is assigned the job of the Receiver of Memory. The Receiver of Memory holds all the memories, so that the members of the society don’t have to feel pain, or happiness. The Giver, the old Receiver of Memory, and Jonas can have feelings since they have memories. The Sameness portrayed in the novel would be a negative way of life because it would eliminate choice, there would be a lack of individuality,
Individuals in today’s society are honored, but in Jonas’s society, if someone is not the same as everyone else then he or she can apply for release (61). Different individuals bring different perspectives. With different perspectives come new ideas and more options on how to solve a problem. The Giver is the only person in Jonas’s society who can tell people his ideas and offer advice, because he has memories. The Giver asks Jonas if he remembers the day a plane flew over the community. Jonas replies that he does remember the plane and he was scared. The Giver then continues, “’So were they. They prepared to shoot it down. But they sought my advice. I told them to wait… I used my wisdom, from the memories. I knew that there had been times in the past- terrible times- when people had destroyed others in haste, in fear, and had brought about their own destruction,’” (141). The Giver is the only one who could have known this. The reason the creators of Jonas’s society eliminate individuality is so the individuals would not have different ideas. The creators figured it would be easier to control one person’s ideas rather than a whole society’s. By doing this though, Jonas’s society cannot develop and become