Differences Between The Giver And Today's Society

Would sameness be the best thing in today's society? In the novel, The Giver sameness seemed like the best thing for Jonas (the main character) and his community. How everyone lived the same life doing the same thing and having everything easily handed to them. After Jonas was assigned as the receiver, he eventually realized the reality of what was going on around him. The community he lived in, which could be referred to as a utopia, quickly turned into a dystopia where all feelings were to be suppressed and where everyone had to follow strict rules. Family, children, and feelings are three big differences between Jonas’s society and today's. To begin with, family is one of the most cherished things life have to offer. In Jonas's society, citizens must apply for a spouse and for children. The Committee of elders observe the people in the community to assign family units. According to the novel, the …show more content…
In Jonas's community, people have no concept of actual feelings unlike people today who all have several different feelings and emotions about different things. In today's society people will say that they love someone else as a word of affection but for Jonas, that word is considered “obsolete”.When Jonas asks his parents if they love him his mother responds with, “Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete” (Lowery 127). This shows that people in the community don't use words like love to express things like affection. Today when children become a certain age they usually start developing feelings for other kids and call it a crush. For Jonas, they are called stirrings and they are not allowed. When children in that community start getting feelings for someone else they are given pills to make it go away. In this quote is Jonas’s mother telling him that he must not forget the stirring pills, “If you forget, the stirrings will come