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.
Hello again! Okay, just like your previous post, this one was excellent! Your statements were once again easily supported by evidence from the book, and your opinions and content reflected the topic of your post perfectly. Your thinking was explained well, and it was good how you connected our discussion in class to the post to back up what you were saying. From your post, I did not gain any new understandings; however from this, I did recap what we were discussing and processed the information. But I have to admit, it's only now, after thinking about it a little more, that I realize how weird and fictional Jonas's world is. I mean, a place with no lying? Or pain? I guess I have gained an understanding from your post after all. I now really see how fake and incomplete this society is. It's just very unusual how naive and gullible those of the community are. I now realize how the rule of no lying is used and manipulated to make people follow rules. Because when there is no lying, people assume that everyone always tells the truth. So when the Elders place rules and claim it's for the betterment of the community everyone will follow them without rebellion. Wow. I just realized this. Your post has given me a new comprehension and is extremely good. Once again. Just check for those minor grammar mistakes!
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