The Giver
Summary
This book is about a community that has been stripped of emotions and decisions besides a select few people. The people can see any color besides white and black. The people’s memory has been wiped of all bad and some good memories of the past of the world. Every person is given a job when they become of age. The babies that are underweight or have any birth defects are thrown away with no remorse because they have no emotion. The main character is given the job of the giver. The giver in the community is given the ability to see color and feel the emotions of the people of the community. The giver is also giving the ability to learn about the history of the world like war. He also has the ability to share his powers to anyone he decides. At the end of the book he decides to take his brother outside the community because he knew he was special and allows everyone else to see color, feel emotion, and get they’re memories back.
Society
This is a mix between imaginary and communism utopian society. The reason is because the idea of brainwashing people where they can’t feel any emotion is pure imaginative because that’s nearly impossible to do. In the book everyone is given a job and everything is split evenly between everyone. A real world example is the way North Korea is a communist country. But in the book it is more cleaned up because it’s more of a utopia. No one ever starves and everyone dies of old age.
The Times
The book The Giver was published in 1996. During this time we are the child days of the millennial generation. This generation was raised by parents that were in Generation X and grandparents of the baby boomers. The millennial generation was described to be more social and expressive then the previous generations. With the inventions of the World Wide Web, text messages, and video game systems like PlayStation and Nintendo 64. So this allowed this generation to grow up with the advancements of the internet, cell phones, and entertainment made them more expressive. The millennials were different from the Gen X because they believed that traveling the world was more important than buying a house and starting a family. With the advancements of the internet and social media they were exposed to more information about history and the world than any other generation before them. This made the generation see the world in a different light.
Comparison
This book was a reimagined alternative of that current time because at that time you started to see people learn more about the past that the older generation decided to ignore or not teach. During today’s times you can see how much we as a society have advanced by learning from past mistakes and trying to make a better future for the future generations after. In The Giver you can say that the generations before millennials were living in that type of community that The Giver was in by just trying to ignore and live with past mistakes before them. The main character or the giver represents millennials and his younger siblings and the future generations. Because the millennials were the first to try to make a change to the world as a generation that was passed down to the next generation now to get to the point we are now.
