The Giver By Jaqueline Woodson Analysis

The fight for racial equality is an ongoing battle. Seventh grade readers learn a condensed and sanitized version of slavery, the emancipation, and the civil rights movement. Many students, especially Black children, learn the full truth outside of the classroom from literature like Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson, where she writes from a child’s perspective of the influences of slavery and racism. Woodson incorporates aspects of the civil rights movement that a child can relate to and understand. In Woodson’s poem “Greenville, South Carolina, 1963” (30-31), she discusses the more subtle effects of the civil rights movement. She speaks of the unconscious fears that Black people had looming in their mind. In this poem Jackie is an infant …show more content…
Parental involvement and input into their child education is paramount to their child’s success. However, parents are not always correct in their interpretations and opinions of the books that are provided to students. The Giver by Lois Lowers, is one of many books that parents have called to be banned from schools. It is understandable when the information is taken out of context that a parent would feel that the material is unsuitable for a child in the seventh grade. In this utopian book sameness is coveted and feelings are cured with a pill. The elders maintain their sense of peace through total regulation of marriages, jobs, births, and even deaths. One scene in particular that receives the most criticism is the “release of the twin”. Many parents believe that infanticide is too morbid a subject for children in the seventh grade. In this methodically written scene Jonas’s father enters a room holding one of the twins and a nurse with the other. They proceed to weigh them and the lesser of the twins is the one chosen to be released. Jonas’s father does not know what death is; so therefore, he releases the child to Elsewhere by injecting a substance directly into the child’s scalp, placing it in a box, and then drops the box down a shoot. In this moment Jonas is furious with his father for killing the smaller twin. He finally realizes that his community is operating on a flawed system and can see that his parents are merely pawns in this twisted society. Jonas …show more content…
It is imperative that children find a sense of home. It can either be a physical place or a mindset that allows them to be free and safe. To a child, home is a place where they are encouraged to be curious and creative. In Brown Girl Dreaming, Jackie finds her true home in her writing, from her earliest moment she can remember wanting to write. She finds control and happiness in just the simple act of writing her name. In the poem “mountain song”, Jackie says “I’ll be a writer. I’ll be able to hold on to each moment, each memory – everything” (Woodson 274). Eventually her mother and teachers begin to believe in her dream of being a writer. In these surrounding she flourishes and she finds home within her writings. Another important aspect is love and understanding. In The Giver, Jonas is given concept of love within a memory of safety warmth and safety. The memory the Giver had bestowed on him of a loving family during the holidays. The Giver asks Jonas what he perceived from this memory and he responds that he felt warmth, happiness, and something that he did know how to describe it or what the feelings word was. The Giver tells him it is called love. Once he received this memory it is all that he longed for. He questioned the idea of love and asked his parents if they loved him and they told him the word love is “so meaningless, it has become almost obsolete… you could ask, ‘Do you enjoy me?’ The answer is ‘Yes’ [or] ‘Do you take pride in my accomplishments?’ And