The controlled and unfeeling world

This picture shows a jet plane flying over a community of black and white, bringing us back to Jonas’s community when the pilot-in-training lost his direction and flew over the community, causing much chaos. In this community, almost everything is under control and the people live in a sheltered city, protected from any form of harm and where they have to conform to a set of rigid and regimental rules. The people in this community are secluded from the real world and live in a utopian society where knowledge about anything out of their little community is erased from their memories. Consequently, mistakes such as the one made by the-pilot-in-training would leave them clueless on how to react because they have never experienced such unexpected occurrences. This could lead to acts out of fear just like how the pilot-in-training almost got released.
In such a dystopian community where knowledge and memories are taken away from the people, the people live in a “comfort” zone of delusion. Surprises and the fun of life are taken away from them and they live a life of oblivion. In such a “protected” community, where mistakes are prevented instead of corrected, the people living there will never experience consequences of making mistakes and the joy of learning from them.

Pills are commonly consumed by us for health reasons and many other purposes. However, in The Giver’s society, such pills are taken to stop The Stirrings, which are the sexual desires of teenagers undergoing puberty. In this society, the people are not given the opportunity to mature in their natural way. They are forced to take these pills by the way of the law to stop their natural feelings and desires from arising and are also not given the chance to choose their own life partners. As a result, the people live rather unfeeling and cold lives and people are not given the chance to mature in their own natural way .

This picture depicts a scene of a living room in one of Jonas’s memories. In this room, a family was having a celebration and as Jonas had perceived, the atmosphere was very warm and he felt love within the family. Such love of which is made impossible in a society like The Giver’s, where the old gets sent to the House of the Old, people cannot choose their own spouse and where their children are assigned to them as well. The word ‘love’ in their community is even said to be “obsolete” and too vague a word that it held no meaning at all. True love in their community was never felt by the people before that it became somewhat non-existent and the true meaning of love warped. In my opinion, I believe everybody should be granted the opportunity to grow up in their own natural way and to experience true love in its actual form.