the giver

The Giver by Lois Lowry is about a boy, named Jonas, who lives in small town, but this town is different. They do not have memories, so that there is sameness in the community. By having sameness, they can control everything to a point where there is no pain. They govern sameness by having no color, no memories of the past, you do not choose your job, and you do not know who your real family is. Choosing your own book to read for the summer has many challenges involved. You will have a hard time recognizing literary items in the book. When something confusing in book you cannot ask questions. Then there are books that make it hard for people to read.

When reading alone, it is tough to find literary devices the author has put into the book. One literary device is symbolism. In The Giver color is used as symbolism. Within the story, color coexists with emotion. This quote is happening when Jonas is looking at Fiona. The change that he notices is the hair changing colors from black and white to red. “Actually, Jonas thought, trying to recreate it in his mind, it wasn’t Fiona in her entirety. It seemed to be just her hair.” (90) Color cannot exist because it gives emotions. The book there cannot be emotion because it makes you unique because it gives ideas of love, anger envy and so on. “Close your eyes and be still, now. I am going to give you the memory of a rainbow”. (96) Here Jonas gets all the colors, therefore, he gets all emotions. There is also theme found in the book. A theme found in The Giver is the danger of conformity or sameness. When conforming, there is a sense of following the crowed. The people in this story conform to the idea that love is bad and causes pain, so they dull the word out so it does not mean anything when used. “Do you love me? … Your father means that you used a very generalized word.” (127) Seen in this quote, the people of the community get rid of emotion with conformity.

While reading something at any time you might have a question, but while reading it alone you can’t figure the question out. If you were reading it for a class then you could go back to the discussion the next day to clarify. In The Giver everyone sees in black and white. You don’t really find this out until half way through the book, but they give you clues about this. These clues are confusing, so you ask questions. Some examples of these clues are: “The apple had changed! (24); “He looked up and toward her going through the door, it happened: she changed.” Then there is this idea of the release that the author portrays. During the whole book, the reader is asking what this concept of release is. Is it death or being moved somewhere else? “Was there someone there, waiting, who would receive the tiny released twin? Would it grow up Elsewhere, not knowing, ever, that in this community lived a being who looked exactly the same?" (115) This quote portrays that there is another place to go to after the release. “They told his whole life before they released him.” (31) This quote is more like a funeral, because they tell life accomplishments.

There are some books that are not for everyone to read. It could be the maturity of the book, the vocabulary, or disturbing scenes. In The Giver there are grotesque images. For instance, if there is twins they will kill one of the twins because they can’t have two of the same people looking the same. “As he continued to watch, the newchild no longer crying, moved his arms and legs in a jerking motion. Then he went limp. His head fell to the side, his eyes half open. Then he was still.” (150) There are other killings like this. There was a time when a person was asked to be killed. “She would prefer to inject herself. (151) This image is dark, because she kills herself. In the book there is this idea of sameness, so they assign jobs. One of the jobs is a birthmother. This is basically a sex slave. “… I get assigned birthmother… There is little honor in that assignment.” (21) This is sexist and wrong, but it is incorporated in the book. There are many challenges that ally with choosing your own book to read over the summer. You cannot pick out literary items out as easily if you were with a class. If there is anything in the book that you doing understand you could not ask questions. There are some books out there that are just not for everyone.