The Importance of the Past in "The Giver"
Exploring a World Without Pain, Individuality or Memory
Lois Lowry’s The Giver explores a world devoid of pain, individuality and memory. She creates a world many people have thought about, where there is no war, no pain, no fear. All the bad feelings in life disappear but with those bad feelings, the good parts of life are also absolved. Life has no pleasure and pain, no sense of self, and no good or bad memories. The outcome is that readers learn that life is truly not complete without both the good and the bad sides.
Life Without Pain
In the “Sameness” world that twelve-year old Jonas lives in, there is no such thing as pleasure and pain. However, Lowry raises an important point to this reality -- if there is no pain, then how does one know the significance of pleasure?
The people live in a community void of all emotional variation. One cannot understand the capacity of an emotion without having experienced the counterpart. This is the way they understand their entire life.
Death is not tragic because life is not treasured. Pleasure is not respected because pain is nonexistent. The most important joys in our lives, such as the birth of a new baby, the prospect of a new career, the ceremony of marriage, are all treated as daily activities with no sentiment around them.
The people in the “Sameness” world cannot fully value life because they do not have the capacity to feel all emotions. In this way, readers understand how important feelings are to appreciating our world, even the ones that cause pain.
Life Without the Individual
Jonas struggles throughout the book to find his individuality. In a sense, this is a coming-of-age novel about the angst many teenagers feel about the future. In Jonas, we see a unique boy who does choose his own path and goes against the norm. Jonas can see colour and has the ability to view memory. Because of this, he has become an individual and can make his own choices.
However, most of the other people in the community do not actually get a choice. At the age of twelve, the people go through The Ceremony of Twelve, where they are assigned a career. Shortly after they are assigned a wife and two children. They do not get to make the “wrong” choices in life such as marrying the wrong person or choosing the wrong occupation. It is these mistakes in life that help shape people and help them choose the right path. The people in this community never get that choice, thus they lack that sense of the individual.
Life Without Memory
In the world of “Sameness”, the Giver makes it his duty to protect people from making wrong choices by limiting their memory. Memory helps shape one's life; through memories one is able to become an individual.
Furthermore, it is the experiences of pleasure and pain and other emotions from the past that help people understand which path to choose. Without memories of things such as death and divorce, one cannot appreciate how wonderful life and true love is. In order to learn from their mistakes, which is something the people in the community do not get to experience, memory is needed.
Lowry shows readers that there are two sides to every thing in life. Without pain, we cannot appreciate pleasure; without memory, we cannot appreciate the present; without the individual, we cannot appreciate our true selves.
Works Consulted
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. New York: Bantam Doubleday Books for Young Readers, 1993.
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