The Giver
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Imagine a world without fear, pain, warfare, poverty, hunger, or terror. It sounds like a perfect world, a utopia but as you read farther into the book you realize that to accomplish all of these things you have to take away some fundamental elements of life such as feelings, love, diversity, choices, and even the ability to see colors. For a community to take away all those aspects of life I don’t think there is a utopia in fact it’s the exact opposite. Life is all about perception of events and if you take away the feeling that u get when you see a girl u like for the first time, the vivid colors as you walk threw a meadow of wild flowers, or the pain of someone close to you dying you go through life without feeling anything just living and doing what you are told without any feeling towards anything. You end up doing something just because someone told you that’s how it’s done and that is what u are supposed to do. That is not a visionary system of political and social perfection.
A job is one of the most important parts of a person’s life. If its so important shouldn’t enjoy it. In this “utopia,” created in The Giver you dont get to do that. Other people choose the activity you are going to do for the rest of your life. Fiona was assigned Caretaker of The Old, a job she really wanted, but what happens if she starts that job and decides that she really doesn’t like it, She cant change jobs because she lives in a world where she doesnt have a choice, where she cant run her own life. By not having any kind of influence in one of the major choices in your life, the community can have some tragedies such as this one from the book. ” I heard about a guy who was absolutely sure he was going to be an engineer and instead he was assigned sanitation laborer. He jumped into the river and swam to the closest community, no one saw him again.” Having elders chose every job for everyone and expecting things to run smooth is completely unrealistic and such events most likely happened more often than everyone knew but people were “sheltered” from them by not hearing about them. How can you know what u want to do for the rest of your life by the age of twelve, when I was twelve all I wanted to do when I grew up was to be a fireman. Now I am eighteen and I want to become a chef, who is to say that I won’t change my mind again within the next year? No one can predict what they would like to do for the rest of their life by the young age of twelve. Having the elders decide this major factor in everyone’s life without the people they are choosing for input at all is just one example of why the community written about in the giver is not a utopia.
“Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there.” (Otomo No Yakamochi) This could be the premise for witch the relationships in this community happen. How can you desire something that you have never experienced? By having your wife chosen for you, one never gets to experience falling in love, the butterflies in your stomach as you try to ask someone out, or the devastating feeling of being dumped. When you don’t experience any of these feeling while dating before you find the person that you going to spend the rest of your life with, how can you truly love the person that is assigned to you. This is a world where you cant feel anything for anyone, where you cant love your friends or your parents, where you cant have a girlfriend because you are assigned a wife. The premise of the community is that people can be perfectly matched, but as I mentioned before, people can change their minds and likings from one day to another. They can start to dislike each other. In life, sometimes two people think they are made for each other and get married, but after a few years they get divorced. Why? Because theyve changed and they dont longer want to be together. This cant happen in this community because you are assigned the perfect match by the elders so how can u fall out of love. If you have these feelings that you do not love the person you are assigned you must be wrong because the elders have found you your perfect match. “The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.” Chapter 6, pg. 48. Again without the experience of true love I don’t believe that this society could have been a utopia.
In the book you have the option to apply for a child. How inhumane is this. I love the fact that in our world people have the choice to adopt a baby and raise them as their own. It’s a wonderful thing that helps a lot of children have great lives when otherwise they wouldn’t. But also in this world people can have children of their own. I see the joy on people’s faces when they tell loved ones that they are pregnant and the face of someone when they see a small baby that they have