Essay Example on 'the Giver' by Lois Lowry
English: Discuss how Lois Lowry creates different worlds in texts that comment on our own world in the novel, The Giver. | The Giver Essay | Cameron MacKay14/11/2010 | |
Lois Lowry’s highly acclaimed children’s novel The Giver, constantly refers to important themes in the storyline to portray messages of morality to the reader. These are conveyed through themes in the book. Some of these themes such as the expression of Individuality, the issue of Euthanasia, and the Customs and Rules of the Community convey especially strong messages to the reader, and can be correlated with certain ethical issues in our own world. I will be focussing on these particular themes to uncover what Lowry thinks about our own ‘society’ and its morals and how they could change. One way that social customs/rules can be echoed in our world is through laws in our own world. Other, more disconcerting topics like euthanasia and death really shock the reader (Ch. 19, pg. 187-189) and extensively express the flaws in the Community. Another, most important theme is about the expression of Individuality and its importance inside Jonas’ Community and our own society.
In The Giver, themes and ideas about the fictional societies’ social customs and rules are conveyed to the reader as messages and are shown through Jonas’s point of view (we read this through his silent narrative). The Community in The Giver has a set of written rules that must be followed by everyone. This correlates to our own government and the laws citizens of the country have to follow. These general rules and customs are constantly referred to in the novel, stated and pondered over by the main protagonist; Jonas. Some rules such as respecting elders and apologising (pg. 81) seem reasonable or maybe even rational and logical, but major rules like no lying, and the daily custom of sharing dreams and feelings would breach privacy, and completely violate any secrecy or intimacy. It’s like being interrogated! “It was
Lois Lowry’s highly acclaimed children’s novel The Giver, constantly refers to important themes in the storyline to portray messages of morality to the reader. These are conveyed through themes in the book. Some of these themes such as the expression of Individuality, the issue of Euthanasia, and the Customs and Rules of the Community convey especially strong messages to the reader, and can be correlated with certain ethical issues in our own world. I will be focussing on these particular themes to uncover what Lowry thinks about our own ‘society’ and its morals and how they could change. One way that social customs/rules can be echoed in our world is through laws in our own world. Other, more disconcerting topics like euthanasia and death really shock the reader (Ch. 19, pg. 187-189) and extensively express the flaws in the Community. Another, most important theme is about the expression of Individuality and its importance inside Jonas’ Community and our own society.
In The Giver, themes and ideas about the fictional societies’ social customs and rules are conveyed to the reader as messages and are shown through Jonas’s point of view (we read this through his silent narrative). The Community in The Giver has a set of written rules that must be followed by everyone. This correlates to our own government and the laws citizens of the country have to follow. These general rules and customs are constantly referred to in the novel, stated and pondered over by the main protagonist; Jonas. Some rules such as respecting elders and apologising (pg. 81) seem reasonable or maybe even rational and logical, but major rules like no lying, and the daily custom of sharing dreams and feelings would breach privacy, and completely violate any secrecy or intimacy. It’s like being interrogated! “It was