"The Giver" by Lois Lowery.

Essay by esterlin001University, Bachelor'sA+, March 2004

download word file, 6 pages 5.0 1 reviews

This is a research paper about the book The Giver by Lois Lowery. I used sources, the paper includes quotes from many different references and a works cited page. It breaks down the story looking in from a different perspective; as if the world Jonas lives in takes away from the richness of humanlife.

A Colorless World

In the world today people make their own decisions, clean their own houses, drive their own cars, and live their own lives. Or they think they do. In Lois Lowry's novel The Giver, a young boy named Jonas lives in a uniformed community; he thought he lived a normal life until someone showed him the truth. According to Carol Hurst "The society we find [in the novel] seems ideal. Everyone has a job for which he or she is suited emotionally, physically and mentally" (Hurst). Every family unit has four people a father, mother, daughter, and son.

The family members are always happy. This world is free from hunger, disease, crime, and rudeness. This world does not understand any human emotion, but Jonas is forced to experience all of them in less than a year. In her novel, Lowry creates a colorless world devoid of human emotion, both good and bad; Jonas' first glimpse of color foreshadows the richness of human experience that unfolds as he discovers the truth about happiness, pain, true love, and death.

Before the committee of elders assigned Jonas his future job as Receiver of Memories, he experienced a few strange happenings. One afternoon while he was tossing an apple around with his friend Asher, the apple somehow changed. He could not understand what it was and no one else saw the change either. This was his first sight of the color red, but living in a...