The Giver Dystopia

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is a novel published in 1993 that explores the idea that through the attempt to create a utopia, it is the impossibility of this mission that often times leads to a dystopia. The story takes place in a “community”, where emotions are controlled through discipline and drugs, and “sameness” takes the place of individuality. While on the surface this community looks appealing, the reader quickly learns all that has to be sacrificed in order to make this “utopia” a possibility, such as love, choice, and memories of the past. After Jonas is selected to be the new receiver of memories, Lowry uses his epiphany, his realization of the loss of humanity that sameness brings, in order to set up the climatic breakout from his society and to strengthen the theme that humanity must be protected at all cost.

Jonas has a life-changing epiphany in the novel: he realizes that people must have emotions and memories to actually experience humanity. At the beginning of the novel, Jonas is like …show more content…
Because Jonas has realized how dark his community is, it sparks him to seek out change.He knows that things “could be different”, and he makes a plan to rock his community and bring back all the memories of the past. The audience initially thinks that the climax will happen with this carefully planned exit from the community. However, with the horrid words of his father, that “Gabriel”, a baby that has been staying with the family, “will be released tomorrow”, Jonas’s epiphany won't allow him to accept the murder of a baby he has come to love. Instead, his new mindset makes him abandon the plans he has with the Giver and set out on his own with Gabe, away from the community. The action turns at this climatic episode because of what Jonas now knows, making it impossible for there to be a safe plan to bring humanity back. Chaos, instead, will ensue for all members of the community and