The Giver Response

In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Jonas is a normal citizen in a community who is assigned the job to hold all the memories of his community. In my opinion, having one person carry every memory in a community will not make the community happier. This job will also make the person selected unhappy. If people are not able to develop true emotions, then they would not be able to connect with others, and develop close relationships. This system effectively sacrifices one person just to make the community more productive. The single person that holds all the memories would be lonely, depressed, and traumatized forever. In a normal world, if someone feels sad, they could just go to their family or friends to share their feelings or experiences to try …show more content…
Jonas looked over at him.
"There could be love", Jonas whispered.(pg.161-162)” This quote represents Jonas talking to Gabe about one of the most beautiful and sublime things that was missing from the community -- the feeling of love.
It is impossible to have true love or any other true emotions if people don’t have shared memories of experiences together. For example, Jonas once asked his parents, “Do you love me?”(pg.159). They laughed and told him that when the feeling of love was removed, the concept became so broad and capacious that it became insubstantial and meaningless. Jonas’ parents didn’t understand love, because they had no memory of Jonas that made them happy or brought him closer to them. However, Jonas thought that the feeling of love was one of the most meaningful and concise feelings. In conclusion, I think that this is why people should not have one person hold all the memories, and value them more. My reasoning is that people would not develop true emotions, and are not able to connect and develop close relationships with people if they do not have memories, or make anyone happier.This system effectively sacrifices one person just to make the community more