The Giver: How Does Community Affect Identity?

How Does Community Affect Identity?

Have you ever noticed that some people can act or be different based on their community? A good example of this is how the people acted in the book The Giver. The community that Jonas’s lived in was a utopia which means that everything was perfect. The Giver depicts that the community was under very strict guidelines that affected the people’s identity. Not being able to do what the people of Jonas’s community wanted to do affected the people's identity. The elders gave them a task and they couldn’t do what they wanted like chose their own jobs. An example is that in the community the government chose Jonas’s job that he would for a long time until he grew older. He also couldn’t change his job if he didn’t …show more content…
Having no feeling affected their identities because they couldn’t feel love and other feelings like pain. An example of how the community couldn’t have feeling was that they couldn’t have the feeling of love because they had a pill that people took every morning to take the feeling of love away in their dreams. In page 49 Jonas starts to have feelings and it states,”Though the feelings were confused, he thought that he had liked the feelings that his mother had called Stirrings.” An example when Jonas sees color is when he was with Asher and he saw the apple changed color. An example from the book that proves that the people of Jonas’s community couldn’t see color is that on page 120 the Giver says,”Our people made that choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences.” This proves that the people couldn’t see color because Asher didn’t see the apple change and when he was talking to the Giver, he says that it is probably a flaw in the genes and they need to fix it. This shows why the community is affecting the people’s identity by taking away colors and