The Dystopia In The Giver, By Lois Lowry

Throughout the centuries, humanity has strived to reach it’s musings of a world without flaws. In the novel The Giver, by Lois Lowry, Jonas’s reality appears to be the utopia our society longs for, but it’s beauty is only skin deep. At first glance, these two civilizations have nothing in common, but once you delve into their details, eerie similarities appear causing the reader to feel that we are on our way to becoming the dystopia we fear. Granted, we have far to go before we become that, there are some parallels that can cause debate. Our stances on emotion, family, and learning can be weighed against each other; luckily, the can also be contrasted. When it comes to feeling, the populace mainly understands how to control themselves;
Before Jonas started his training to become the new Receiver, he was as blissfully unaware of the human race’s painful history as everyone else. In his society the only person to know of the world’s history is the Receiver, he or she is burdened with with the memories of more chaotic times, this knowledge is used to help advise any major decisions of the council. The people even had limited access to books to further isolate their knowledge. When Jonas first met the Giver he noticed that there were a lot of books in that dwelling, he commented, “The books in his own dwelling were the only books he had ever seen. He had never known that other books existed.” In the nonfictional world one of the most important subjects we are taught is history; we study this so we can better understand our world. In learning history we are studying the mistakes of the past in order to help us in not repeating in the future. While we do our best to educate ourselves, we are still prone to not understanding like they did in The Giver, there will always be someone with memories of the past to help guide us