Losing Individuality
There is a Japanese proverb, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down,” meaning it is hard to be different without meeting resistance (Hashi, “Conformity in Japan”). Society has always wanted to make people “normal.” From the first moment I stepped into Athens Academy, I sought to both stand out and fit in, but these are contradictions and cannot really exist together. At first I thought I was succeeding at this game, but as time progressed, I realized that I was just slowly assimilating to what I thought people wanted me to be because I thought I would be admired by my peers if I just went with the flow. I was not wrong. When I realized I was losing parts of myself, I tried to go back to who I was before and found …show more content…
When the main character, Cady Heron, played by Lindsay Lohan, comes to the new High School she is unique. She has a background of being homeschooled, she lived in Africa for most of her life, she is genuinely kind, and physically beautiful. She seeks out to be accepted and admired by her peers and does this is joining up with the “plastics,” the cool kid: pretty, shallow, and obsessed with their world image (Waters, “Mean Girls”). They convince her that pursuing one of her passions, math, is “social suicide,” and she gives up something that makes her different according to the idea that being a “mathlete” is unpopular (Waters, “Mean Girls”). Cady gets caught up in a “Girl World,” one where she changes and finds herself following silly “rules” like: “you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week,” in order to gain acceptance and “friends” (Waters, “Mean Girls”). She loses the parts of herself that “used to think there was just fat and skinny, and traded it for the idea that “there 's a lot of things that can be wrong on your body” by following these “rules” and social standards that this society has placed before her (Waters, “Mean Girls”). When she sees that she is losing …show more content…
Everyone in this society created by Lowry, has no concept of individualism, true emotion, or color. They see the world as black and white, literally and they feel no emotion or desire because of the “pills” they take to “treat” any “stirrings” of emotions (Lowry, “The Giver” 38). Without emotion there can be no “love,” which is one of the first things Jonas, the protagonist of the story, notices and longs for after receiving the “memories” (Lowry, “The Giver” 125-126). Jonas’s ability to feel, to really feel true emotion, makes him different, a threat to the dystopian society he lives in. According to the motto or philosophy of the society, harmony can only exist if “people (are not allowed to) make choices of their own… (as it is) not safe” (Lowry, “The Giver” 98). The “elders” make every decision for the people so that they“(do not) [choose] wrong” and disrupt the fragile balance of the society that relies on people thinking the same way (Lowry, “The Giver” 98 and 15). If one does blend coherently with this society they are struck down or “released” (Lowry, “The Giver” 2). For example: “The precision of language was one of the most important tasks of small children. Asher,” Jonas’s best friend, “had asked for a smack,”
There is a Japanese proverb, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down,” meaning it is hard to be different without meeting resistance (Hashi, “Conformity in Japan”). Society has always wanted to make people “normal.” From the first moment I stepped into Athens Academy, I sought to both stand out and fit in, but these are contradictions and cannot really exist together. At first I thought I was succeeding at this game, but as time progressed, I realized that I was just slowly assimilating to what I thought people wanted me to be because I thought I would be admired by my peers if I just went with the flow. I was not wrong. When I realized I was losing parts of myself, I tried to go back to who I was before and found …show more content…
When the main character, Cady Heron, played by Lindsay Lohan, comes to the new High School she is unique. She has a background of being homeschooled, she lived in Africa for most of her life, she is genuinely kind, and physically beautiful. She seeks out to be accepted and admired by her peers and does this is joining up with the “plastics,” the cool kid: pretty, shallow, and obsessed with their world image (Waters, “Mean Girls”). They convince her that pursuing one of her passions, math, is “social suicide,” and she gives up something that makes her different according to the idea that being a “mathlete” is unpopular (Waters, “Mean Girls”). Cady gets caught up in a “Girl World,” one where she changes and finds herself following silly “rules” like: “you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week,” in order to gain acceptance and “friends” (Waters, “Mean Girls”). She loses the parts of herself that “used to think there was just fat and skinny, and traded it for the idea that “there 's a lot of things that can be wrong on your body” by following these “rules” and social standards that this society has placed before her (Waters, “Mean Girls”). When she sees that she is losing …show more content…
Everyone in this society created by Lowry, has no concept of individualism, true emotion, or color. They see the world as black and white, literally and they feel no emotion or desire because of the “pills” they take to “treat” any “stirrings” of emotions (Lowry, “The Giver” 38). Without emotion there can be no “love,” which is one of the first things Jonas, the protagonist of the story, notices and longs for after receiving the “memories” (Lowry, “The Giver” 125-126). Jonas’s ability to feel, to really feel true emotion, makes him different, a threat to the dystopian society he lives in. According to the motto or philosophy of the society, harmony can only exist if “people (are not allowed to) make choices of their own… (as it is) not safe” (Lowry, “The Giver” 98). The “elders” make every decision for the people so that they“(do not) [choose] wrong” and disrupt the fragile balance of the society that relies on people thinking the same way (Lowry, “The Giver” 98 and 15). If one does blend coherently with this society they are struck down or “released” (Lowry, “The Giver” 2). For example: “The precision of language was one of the most important tasks of small children. Asher,” Jonas’s best friend, “had asked for a smack,”