What Is The Theme Of The Giver

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“We are, at almost every point of our day, immersed in cultural diversity: faces, clothes, smells, attitudes, values, traditions, beliefs, rituals.” – Randa Abdel-Fattah. We have discovered our past, present, and future in our differences, and without that, we are all the same. The Giver is a science fiction novel by Lois Lowry about a twelve-year-old boy named Jonas who believes that he lives in a perfect community. After the important Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas receives a major job with unique responsibilities. As the new Receiver of Memories, Jonas is mentored by the Giver, a tired, old man filled with pain from holding memories of the world. Jonas learns that his community is filled with sameness. In fact, there are almost no differences. …show more content…
The Giver teaches the theme that adapting to sameness can negatively change your life. Sameness limits personality, choice, and interests. First and foremost, sameness limits one’s ability to express his or her personality. “’Well everything’s different now,’ Jonas reminded her. ‘Even the nameplate on our bikes,’ Fiona laughed. During the night each nameplate of each new Twelve had been removed by the maintenance crew and replaced with a style that indicated citizen-in-training” (72). This shows that not only people are alike but also their objects. The Giver explains, there was once diversity in the past. Although people have different thoughts about diversity, we all know that it separated our human race. We treated others based on the color of their skin or their culture. Jonas’s Committee of Elders sacrificed all diversity, culture, and pride for Sameness. “There was a time, actually- you’ll see this in memories later – when flesh was many different colors. That was before we went to sameness. Today all flesh is the same, and what you saw today was the red tones.” the Giver said to Jonas (94). With the variety of personalities, hobbies, …show more content…
In Jonas’s community everyone has the same family units. Each unit has two children, one boy, one girl, and a woman and a man for parents. “Two children – one male one female- to each family unit. It was written very clearly in the rules.” (8). Although it is rare, at some point identical twins were born in the community. This means troubles in the community. Release is apparently the only option with sameness as the main factor. So when test results show that the is expecting identical twins, the nurturer (which happened to be Jonas’s father) has to release one of the twins (136-137). Whether it is demonstrated through family units or test results, sameness affected Jonas’s community. Children in this community will never have a big sister to look up to for help with clothing. Because everyone is wearing the same clothing. No child will have an older brother to play Legos and football with. Because they cannot have interests in anything they like to do. And with the rules clearly written to describe that there shall be no older siblings of the same gender. The community is that devoted to sameness to limit how families choose a spouse. The committee of elders figures that if they choose everything for them, that there is no bad. That however, is not the case. We have seen that sameness affects the community’s personality and choices, what will it do next to their

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