Appreciation on The Giver

Even as a young girl, I loved The Giver.  It perfectly encompasses our world with new twists and turns that rack your mind until you are sore, and relates to you to the point where you think it is not a mere book, but a crystal ball following our every move  When I read it, I get lost in this world, and always try to stay and live in it for a while, just to try it out.  Every time I read it, something new each page comes to me and goes into the big stewing pot that is called my brain, until a little while later it is spooned out at the most unexpected moment, to apply a bit of The Giver to my life.     

Jonas, the main character, lives in the world of Sameness.  While I was a little girl with not a care in the world, I didn’t see any relation between me an Jonas.  He was a pre-teen boy, so obviously we must have been on 2 opposite planets.  Yet, now, after I avoid the fact that he is a boy, the only thing I can focus on is how truly similar we are.  All we want to know is who we are.  We are both lost in this world, searching for ourselves blindly. 

 Jonas tries to be the best he can be, with good ethics such as respecting elders, and finding time for his ‘family’.  At the same time, just like any teenage boy, he has hormones and likes to play war games.  What makes Jonas relatable to everyone though, is the world he lives in.  Dictatorship and communism are pretty close to sameness -- right?  We may not have sameness, but houses, bikes, family dinners, jobs, death (no matter how many words you find for it, death is death), even the simplicity of childhood elements such as playgrounds, snack-time, and stuffed toys are shown throughout the Giver and our life.  Instead of having flying cars and clone machines in the future, Lowry makes the world ‘progress’ in the way of achieving life the easiest it can be -- without creating too much more to get there.  

Before I read this book as a mature teenager, me and many of my peers thought it would be a miracle to all be the same.  No more competing on who has the best clothes, how rich one another families are, how many friends we have, and how much money we can spend.  We have no idea what sameness would be like, but we all believe it would be better than what we have become familiar with, almost tired of.  Jonas never questions the world he lives in, until he matures and receives his job as receiver of memories.  When he gets the memories, his view changes on his world, and he starts to see how individuality and choices can be good.  In a way, I sort of matured or ‘grew’ with the Giver.  Part of ‘finding yourself’ is realizing that differences are what make the world go around, and that without them life is pretty useless.  As a kid, I read this book and drooled over their world, and know I look at it as the worst place you could possibly live.  Like Jonas, I have learned the value of genuineness just from 180 pages of pure genius.  

For us all, life is about growing and learning.  The Giver taught me so much.  Lowry creates the perfect nightmare that is so hard to stop thinking about, much less stop reading.  Jonas’s truth in who he is has a piece of everyone, wether they live in your community or elsewhere.  Even Lowry, as said in her Newberry Acceptance speech, has a lot of herself in Jonas.  Jonas is simply a normal boy that can relate to everyone.  This book will always be in my heart, and hopefully whenever I am struggling along with everyone else on how annoying it can be to not have the easy life of ‘sameness’, I know I will think back to this very book and continue on my path of my unique life, head held high and proud, and maybe someday you will too...