The Giver Week 4

- You have now become Jonas and it is the night before your planned departure from the community. You decide to write a farewell letter to Asher, Fiona, The Giver, Rosemary or your parents (choose one) to explain to him or her why you must leave.

- Dear Giver,

By the time you read this letter, I will probably be far away on my way to elsewhere. I apologize not for informing you about the change of plans, but once you read my explanations I know you will understand me. I honestly had no time. After returning to my dwelling and while having my evening meal, my father announced that he was going to release Gabriel the following day. Turns out that while I was gone they decided that they should try putting Gabriel back in the Nurturing Center. According to my father it seems that he caused an enormous amount of trouble, and even my father had voted to let go of Gabriel. Now there is something that I have been hiding from you all these weeks. One night I was trying to get Gabriel to go to sleep. I put my hand on his back, and I had transferred the memory of the sail ride to him. Please believe me, I had done it unintentionally. I didn't even know I was doing it at first. So night after night I gave Gabriel some of my memories. I am truly very sorry if you think this act was inappropriate, but I just felt something with him. I know you'll understand because you and I are the only ones with true feelings. I felt some kind of a bond with him, although he was just a baby. So I knew that I couldn't let Gabriel get released. First of all because Gabriel is very special to me, and also because if Gabriel got released his memories would be returned to the community, and although I only gave him pleasant memories I knew that I would have to face consequences for sharing my memories. This is why I had to leave the community immediately without contacting you. Now, I just want to thank you for making me the person I am today.

Just an year ago, I was just like any other child in the community, not aware of anything outside of our community or the things that we were missing out on. Once in a while I noticed that something had changed but I did not understand how it did or why. Like that time when I was playing catch with an apple with Asher. While the apple was in the air it had changed. I took it home in curiosity but I had not been able to figure what it was that I saw. Just a little less than an year ago, I was chosen as the Receiver of Memory, and the whole community had congratulated me. But that one thing that caught my ear was what the Chief Elder had said. She said that I would experience a kind of pain I've never knew of before. During the past year you have taught me the true meaning of life that used to exist, and the kind of life that could exist in Elsewhere. I also learned how blind our community was, almost literally. Although I will never be sure of this, I think you could have just given memories but you have given me more than just the memories. You gave me a sense of a real family. When you gave me your favorite memory, the memory of love, I had really liked it as well. After receiving that memory I felt as if you were my real family. It was really nice to know that I had someone like you beside me, but the memory of love also taught something else. That night, after receiving the memory of love, I asked my parents if they loved me. They said that I had used the wrong word, and that the word love meant nothing. I learned how heartless the people in our community is, and how every single individual is so apart. What enabled me to live through my days was you and Gabriel. You had always been there for me to help me, and the only regret I am having right now is that I can't be there for you.

It just seems like yesterday when I witnessed the video of the release and I determined how evil the community was. All those months of learning about true pain and pleasure never did I question what happened to those who were released. That day I thought myself stupid for not being after to figure out that to be released was to be killed. Not only was I shocked of how dishonest and cruel the Elders were to kill people and pretend as if it was a happy ceremony, it had startled me greatly to know that my own father had lied to me as well. Of course there was that time where I read my instructions as the Receiver of Memory and wondered if in every person's instructions it said 'You may lie', but I never suspected my father as one of those liars. But now that I look back at it my father has no truly feelings for me since he does not have any feelings at all, and I guess it would have not been a big deal for him to lie to us. It doesn't seem so surprising now, but I see why I was so stunned that my father had murdered someone; it confirmed that probably countless people in our community is not as innocent or honest as they look like, and in addition, my father had felt no guilt in killing the twin. After turning numb because of my father's true self and his mask, you had been there to calm me down, and even better you had created the grand plan that would have really saved our community from those liars who simply know nothing.

I genuinely believed that your plan would work. I did have some doubts since it was a very risky job and I would have to break a dozen rules, but I tried to be optimistic and I never thought it would turn out this way. I do know for sure that you won't blame me for anything, but the thought that I am not capable of paying you the same treatment and respect is the only thing that makes me hesitate. You haven't been able to give me the memories of courage but I know that I can make it to Elsewhere because you have trained me so well not exactly for this particular assignment, but I know what you have given and taught me is more than enough for me to make it to Elsewhere. During the short time I have known you I have learned the true meaning of life. I wish you could be here with me so that you can also live the life you have only seen in your memories, but now it's too late for second thoughts. Once again I apologize for leaving you in the middle of this chaos with the Receiver and the infant-to-be-released missing. Now I am off trying to find the better life in Elsewhere where color, love, and all the pleasant things still remain. I just wish you the best and I hope that you can fulfill your dreams of meeting Rosemary once again.

Sincerely,

Jonas

The Giver Week 3

For this week's blog post we have to write comments for our group members' blog posts, and I am going to be giving comments about Peggy's blog post #1 and 2.

Peggy's Blog Post #1
First of all, you followed the criteria very well. It had at least three paragraphs, you displayed your thinking, and you answered one of the three questions with lots of detail and example. After reading your blog post I was able to clearly remember the discussion we had in our group a few weeks ago. I had answered the same question as you for my first blog post so it was easy for me to read your blog post as I was trying to compare yours with mine. Your response was similar to my answer. You talked about how it would be amazing to choose your own path for yourself but how it could be dangerous as well since you might make the wrong choices. You referred to information from the book often and you explained the advantages and disadvantages of having your future predetermined. I agreed with you when you said that a predetermined life would be boring and uninteresting. I also agreed with you with your conclusion saying that you would rather choose your future for yourself. Until I read the last paragraph I didn't really think that I gained any new insight from reading your blog post. However in your last paragraph you mentioned that humans would learn from mistakes. Although I have known this I hadn't really connected it with the idea of making mistakes by making the wrong choices for myself. Overall I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I think you have a lot of voice in your writing, and it is also very easy to understand the situation while reading your blog post because you give the background information. P.S. There's one spelling error :P.

Peggy's Blog Post #2
Once again, you've followed the guidlines - at least 3 paragraphs that shows that you're thinking with evidence from the book. I had answered the same question as you again so I could compare your thoughts with mine. I was familiar with some of the information you wrote down because I had thought so as well. I agreed with you about Jonas being disturbed about the rule 'You may lie' because all his life he had been told not to lie and now he is being told that he was allowed to lie. I also wrote about how Jonas was thinking what if everyone else in the community had received the rule of 'You may lie'. With what you had wrote on your blog post I had generally agreed with. One thing I probably didn't really agree with was the part where you said all lies can be hurtful. Of course most lies are hurtful, but in my opinion some lies are necessary. But I do get what you're trying to say. From reading youre second blog post I gained several new information. First of all, I learned about a white lie. To be honest I never really knew about white lies before. After reading your explanation about white lies, I thought a little about Jonas' parents. Could they feel hurt, or something like that if they learned that Jonas had lied? Anyway, I also thought about how I would feel if I was in Jonas' position. I've kind of thought about that before but not really properly. I learned that I would feel really depressed, irritated, and uncomfortable if I never knew if people were telling the truth or a lie. Actually it is already happening in this world because when you're dealing with other people you can't really truly know if they're telling the truth. If you're telling something only you know whether you're being honest or not. I have enjoyed reading your blog post again, as it had plenty of background information, evidence, and voice. Just watch out for those grammar/spelling mistakes.

The Giver Week 2

Jonas has now been selected as the Receiver of Memory, the most honored position in the community.He receives special and unusual instructions and begins to feel apart from his friends and family.
In a well structured 3 paragraph response (including evidence), choose one of the following three questions :

-1. When Jonas learns all about colors, he claims "it isn't fair that nothing has color". Why does he say this?

2. Why does Jonas find the instruction about lying so disturbing?

3. Why does The Giver say that making choices would be frightening for people?
The response is due Tuesday, 18th May.
Enjoy

Once again, I am going to start with a summary of what has happened so far. During the night of the Ceremony of Twelve Jonas had opened his folder which would contain the information he needed for the training. Jonas had found only one single page, and it had 8 instructions. There was instructions that surprised Jonas such as the one that mentioned that Jonas was allowed to lie and the one that said that he was exempted from rules about rudeness, that he was allowed to ask any kind of question to anyone in the community and that he would get the answer. The following day Jonas received his first memory, a very pleasant one with a sled ride on a hill with snow. Day after day that the Giver gave him many more pleasant memories, with only 'painful' memory which was the sunburn (not really that painful). One of the most important things that happened was the fact that Jonas learned about the concept of color. Although he couldn't keep the colors for more than about a second, he could see the different colors now such as red, green, and blue (before the power to see color had been mentioned as the power to see beyond, and yes so the everyone in the community cannot see color, except the Giver and Jonas). For a moment he thought that it was unfair that people couldn't make choices since they couldn't see color, but he quickly put the idea away because the Giver had suggested that it was dangerous if people made the wrong choices.

The question I have chosen to answer is #2. The question is - Why does Jonas find the instruction about lying so disturbing?. I think my main reason would be because Jonas had been raised that way. In the community that Jonas is living in you are not allowed to lie, you are always supposed to follow the rules, and you should always watch out for your language. Precision of language is taken very seriously in the community. Later in Chapter 16 he had learned about love and had asked his parents if they loved him, and they had replied him that love was the wrong word, and mentioned precision of language once again. Lying is taken even more seriously than precision of language. If you use the wrong word to describe something, you just have to fix your mistake. But lying is just forbidden. You just can't lie. It's forbidden. When you are raised up in Jonas' community you're so used to it that automatically you just don't lie. That was why Jonas was so surprised when he read that final instruction. All these years he was told not to lie, and now it said that he was actually allowed to lie. The reason it disturbed him so much was because he didn't want to lie. Another big thing that disturbed Jonas was the thought that in every other people's folders it said that they could lie as well. He felt frightened at the possibility of everyone already lying all the time.

Page 71 says a lot about what Jonas thinks of the instruction about lying. As I said in the previous paragraph he thought of the possibility that on every one's instruction folder it said 'You may lie'. After he thought more about it and elaborated on it, he thought maybe he could ask people such as his father, 'Do you lie?', but he knew that he would never know if the answer he received was true or not. Although it doesn't go much further than this in the book, after reading this part I thought what if everyone in the community did lie, just like Jonas said? During the discussion in our group, we briefly talked about the fact that the adults in the community all lie. The instructors in the school, etc. We discussed that in order to have the community running the instructors need to teach the students fake information. If we stretch this idea farther, it could be that every single person in the community who is twelve or older is allowed to lie. Overall, I think Jonas was disturbed because it was absolutely opposite to what he had been told in his childhood, and it had scared him to think that everyone in the community lied.

The Giver Week 1

In Lois Lowry's novel, Jonas and his family live in the "perfect society" , it could be described as a Utopian Society: , life is safe, orderly, and predictable. Rules are strictly adhered to; every aspect of a person's life is carefully planned. People rarely make choices on their own; everything is decided for them by the community. For this blog post, you have the choice of journal responses ~ Please read the following three responses and CHOOSE one:
1. Would you want your future to be decided by others ? Why or Why not?
2. How do you feel about the "standard practices" and "rituals" in the community?
3. Why is interdependence fostered in the community?
Guidelines for Blog Post - Minimum 3 paragraphs, include examples and evidence from the novel. Enjoy.


First of all, I should probably describe what is going on in the book. The Giver is a book about a imaginary future based utopian community. The book's main character is Jonas and the book revolves around in his point of view. In Jonas' community there are rules for about almost anything and if you do not obey the rules you get released (except for some rules that are lightly taken). Also when you are an infant and you get sick you get released, and when you're very old you get released as well. Besides that, until the age of twelve there is an annual ceremony for every age. There are ceremonies such as getting a ribbon, or getting your own bike. The most important ceremony is the Ceremony of Twelve and this is when you get assigned your job. In Jonas' community you do not get to choose your job. You also don't get to choose your family either. When you get old you are assigned your spouse, and you have to apply for your children (1 boy 1 girl). Yes, you are given your children, because there are birthmothers whose jobs are to give birth. Anyway there is a council who watches what you do until you turn twelve, and they try to make the best choice for you. When Jonas turns twelve, he is 'selected' to be the Receiver of Memory. The Receiver of Memory is very special because there is only one Receiver in the community. The Receiver of Memory is supposed to get special training from the former Receiver. This is what have happened so far in the book, and I chose to answer question number 1 for this blogpost.

1. Would you want your future to be decided by others ? Why or Why not?
I can answer this question quite easily. I would definitely not like to have my future decided by other people. My main reason is because if someone else decided my future for me it might be totally different to what I really want to do. They might give me a job that I have absolutely no interest in. And of course, leading into the choosing itself, it would be no fun if others just chose it for you. In my opinion we deserve to look at all the possiblities laying ahead of us and choose the one we want. If someone chose my future for me, especially in Jonas' community, I'd expect my life to be extremely boring because although you're living an every day life, you don't really have a life because you practically do the same thing every day and you have no passion for it. Also, your job is not the only thing that gets chosen for you in Jonas' community. Your spouse is assigned to you as well. You should have the freedom to marry the person you want and I know I would want that too instead of just being assigned a spouse matching my intelligence level etc.

I guess I'm actually more against living in Jonas' community than just having my future chose by others. Of course I still don't like the idea of being my future pre-determined since it means that I didn't choose it, and I might have no intention to live the kind of life that was chosen for me. However in addition to the pre-determined future and family units, there are a lot of features in Jonas' community that I dislike. First of all, I do not like the fact that they are given their assigned jobs at the age of twelve. In my opinion, you haven't really been able to enjoy your life yet. Well you could have had much fun when you were young, but can you really remember all that if it happened when you were young? You probably couldn't remember too much of it. They stop you before you start to really enjoy your life, and they give you a job. Also before you turn twelve (since Eight to be more exact) you have to do volunteer hours to fulfill the required amount. To be honest when I read this part I thought, how is it volunteer work if you HAVE to do it? Anyway, since we're getting a little off task, after you receive training and you have your job, you apply for a spouse and children. Honestly, what's the point of having a spouse if you don't love them and you barely have anything to do with them. Why not just have a center where babies are trained and taken care by some people and when they grow up just give them jobs? Also, people should have the choice to have children or not. This is where I come back to the reponse to the question. People should have the freedom to make choices for themselves.

Well, there are some bad things that might happen. Not all people are capable of making the right choices for them. They might make the wrong choices and very bad results might greet them. For example, if they choose a job that is not fit for them or if they choose not to have a job at all, they might end up losing everything they had or commiting suicide. Also if they choose the wrong person to marry they could go through very hard times making the both of them very unhappy and a possible divorce in the end. However, I think the risk is worth it. For every good thing there is always a bad side. Despite all the bad things that might occur because people can choose for themselves, I still think that it is right that people have the choice to choose and I would definitely choose my future for myself.