The Giver Essay

Hanson, Carter F. "The Utopian Function of Memory in Lois Lowry's The Giver." Extrapolation 50.1 (2009): 45. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Mar. 2016. “The Utopian Function of Memory” by Carter F. Hanson criticizes the role of memory in the plot and formation of aspects in the Lois Lowry’s “The Giver” like how it can be transferred scientifically by touch and how without it, the Utopian world could function smoothly. Hanson means to compare this novel’s setting to be similar to the settings of many other futuristic societies in the formation of Utopian societies due to the occurrence of a dystopian world. To be more specific, Hanson uses the three leading science fiction and Utopian scholars Lyman Tower Sargent, Tom Moylan, and Frederic
This critique familiarizes with similar science fiction published before the twentieth century by providing Chris Ferns’ view of a utopia to offer stability, security, freedom from hunger and war, and R.W. Chambers’ view of Thomas More’s “Utopians” to show a utopia that people believe is a paradise instead of actually being a place where few will be happy. Furthermore, Hanson portrays “The Giver” as not an “easy going paradise” because like Thomas More’s “Utopians,” its society is in complete stability and in freedom from material want while decisions are made from community elders and punishment comes in forms of banishment, slavery, and ‘release’ or the ‘sentence of death’. Hanson criticizes that “The Giver,” without the absence of satire, is a dystopic novel on top of many factors: Lowry’s tone is detached in the way Jonas the Receiver and the Giver show a ‘dissatisfaction’ with society, social control in “The Giver” is more strict than that of More’s “Utopians” where Jonas’s society’s jobs are assigned to them for life, and that the elderly in Jonas’s society are eliminated without their consent, thus proving Jonas’s society to be “oppressive, lifeless and