Examples Of Sameness In The Giver

What would happen if we all were the same? If everyone you knew wore the same clothes, had their hair done the same way, ate the same food, had the same size family, had the same looking house, read the same books, et cetera. Nobody would be different, individuality would be frowned upon, and you could get killed for breaking one of the hundreds of rules. This is the society in the book The Giver written by Lois Lowry. Symbols such as mirrors and eyes, sunshine, and color help demonstrate the theme of Sameness in The Giver. In The Giver, mirrors and eyes help prove the theme of Sameness. For the most part, mirrors show the character thinking about a reflection of himself and on life itself. In the story, Jonas describes about how mirrors …show more content…
In the communities, sunshine was abolished. All the people in the community have never felt the sunshine on their skin, besides Jonas, the Giver, and eventually Gabriel. Along with sunshine, the Elders also abolished weather through what they called Climate Control. The Elders thought it was the best for the community so nobody ever suffered from diseases like pneumonia, heatstroke, and frostbite. However, the people also missed out on the happiness of heat and the beauty of snow. The first time Jonas felt sunshine he enjoyed it very much. The author reveals his thoughts to us by stating, “The warmth spread, extending across his shoulders, up his neck, onto the side of his face. He could feel it through his clothed parts, too: a pleasant, all-over sensation; and when he licked his lips this time, the air was hot and heavy” (84). The sun made him happy and later, as he talked to the Giver, they discussed a little bit on how the Elders created Climate Control. Then Jonas was confused on why it had not begun to hurt; because the Elders said there would be immense pain. So the Giver gave him another memory: sunburn. It would be his first taste of pain, and he does not expect it. Lois Lowry exposes his thoughts by expressing, “...he felt the warmth again, coming from the sky of this other consciousness that was so new to him. This time, as he lay basking in the wonderful warmth, he felt the passage of …show more content…
The citizens of the community have never been able to see color, except those who have the ability to become the next Receiver. Everything in the community is a mix of black and white, usually gray. The color black is a symbol of death and no-frills while white being a symbol of innocence, purity, and cleanliness. Gray, being a mix of the two, symbolizes something that is dull, boring, or moody, and also sometimes represented as a color of loss or depression. On the other hand, the first color Jonas sees is the color red. The color red symbolizes love, passion, and warmth on the positive side and blood, anger, and destruction on the negative side. The first time that Jonas sees a flash of color is when he was an 11. The author demonstrates this situation, “But suddenly Jonas had noticed, following the path of the apple through the air with his eyes, that piece of fruit had-well, this was the part that he couldn’t adequately understand-the apple had changed. Just for an instant. It had changed in mid-air, he remembered” (24). Later in the story he learned he had just seen color. He also eventually saw that same flash of change in Fiona’s hair. When the Giver told him about color, he got really excited about the color. He was fascinated and could not help but ask more and more questions about color. The author reveals some of the questions he asked. “‘Why can’t everyone see them [colors]? Why did colors