those sick lies contain some truth.

i just finished the giver yesterday and i was totally blown away. the book is about a "utopian" society, even though everybody knows that utopian societies always turn out to be dystopian, so i guess the book is set in a dystopian society. anyway. no one can see color, no one has feelings, and so on. everything is "perfectly organized". Every year, at a special ceremony, the twelve year olds in the community are given assignments, which are the jobs they will hold for their entire lives until they become elders. our main character, jonas, is assigned the incredibly important job of "receiver of memories", in which he must receive memories of color, feelings, etcetera, etcetera...basically, the things that no one else in the community, besides the giver of memories, knows. Jonas is very scared at first, especially because it is such an honored job, and he was told that there would be physical pain involved. when jonas receives the memories, he is shocked at the wonderful colors and other nice memories that no one else gets to experience, and begins to feel rebellious and angry towards the community and how they hold everyone back from both pain and pleasure.

right, so everyone's reading the giver and everyone's getting all weepy-weepy and saying to themselves, oh no, why they killin' babies yo? and yes, there's no doubt that what they are doing is absolutely, totally sick and wrong, but don't you think they might have reasons for isolating the community and keeping them "totally safe"?

my group started talking today about this issue, and the question of why the community is depriving everyone of all the memories. we said that if you wanted to take away pain, you had to take away pleasure, because the two things go hand in hand. if you want to take away heartbreak and sadness, you have to take away love. i don't think jonas really understands how hard it is to find control. the leaders of the community just make it easier by taking away every feeling. the citizens don't know what they're missing because they've never seen or heard of any of the wonderful (or horrendous) things that jonas has seen.

would a world of complete and utter oblivion just be better? would it be better to not have feelings, or things to trouble you, or complete fairness? the citizens of the community seem to think so.

and think about what jonas finds when he escapes-wilderness, complete lack of food, cold, and no shelter. this is exactly what the community was keeping him from! what's good about starvation? many people would argue that you need to have memories and knowledge of fear, and courage, and color, but why? in a perfect world, you'll never be faced with anything dangerous. why do you need color to survive? why do you need art, or music? these people don't care about adding excitement or interest to their lives. all they care about is eating, and working, and sleeping, and staying alive. all those things are taken care of.

what's the point of living, though, if you have no interests? isn't the point of life to experience many different things, to impact other peoples' lives in a dramatic, important way? the people in this "perfect world" are living utterly pointless lives. they're living in a box, totally closed off from the entire world. why do they live anyway? they are useless beings who shove all of their issues and memories and strong desires that could "cause problems" on this one poor, decrepit old man who can barely contain them without having extreme mental breakdowns. it's unfair to dump all your problems on one person, or group of people, at that.

the point of living is to experience pain, and experience problems, and experience the hardships of life. the point of life is to experience every single thing the world has to offer, otherwise, why would we be living on earth anyway? life means to experience joy and love and even the tiniest things like color. everything life throws at you, you've got to absorb, take in, and simply have that experience.

the characters in the giver are being controlled like robots, living pointless, stupid lives, and wasting their time on earth. they aren't experiencing life, and the world, and the wonders and pains of it all. they are not living, and only jonas and the giver have the power to end it all. the citizens know that. they just don't want to live because they're scared of life.