Margaret MacGillivray                                                                                 Humanities

7th Grade                                                                            Isolation In The Wrong Hands

There is a community where there are rules against doing almost anything, and everyone is forced to be exactly the same. This means no decisions are ever made by anyone. This means there are medicines and rules that people must take and follow in order to not feel any emotion or pain. This means everyone is ignorant of the truth. This means isolation for anyone who dares to be different. This is the community in The Giver by Lois Lowry. Jonas, the 12-year-old protagonist, has always been different. When everyone knows which job they’ll have in the community, Jonas is clueless. Jonas’s difference is a big issue because Jonas lives in world when people must take pills to stop emotion, and there is no color anywhere. You have to be a certain age to do almost anything, everything is planned out for you, and everything’s the same. When the Elders in power elect Jonas to be the Receiver of Memory, he learns the truth about what the world used to be like. He doesn’t realize it at the time but the role brings isolation in that he can never see the community the same way again. Isolation is the way the Elders, reinforce sameness in Jonas’s community. They make the decisions for everyone, and enforce a surplus of rules, in order to achieve their view of utopia. What they don’t know is they only achieve utopia once everyone embraces their differences, as unique individuals.

In Jonas’s community, the Elders notice he’s is different, and use their usual strategy, which is to isolate him from the rest of the community in order to prevent Jonas from sharing what he’s learned to the rest of the community. They accomplish this by teaching him about how the rest of the world used to be, when the rest of the community is ignorant. They make it very hard for Jonas to be part of the rest of the community, because he holds so much knowledge and can’t teach anyone what he’s learned. One day, when Jonas sees his friends playing a tag game that represents war, he starts to cry, “Asher,’ Jonas said. He was trying to speak carefully, and with kindness, to say exactly what he wanted to say. ‘You had no way of knowing this. I didn’t know it myself until recently. But it’s a cruel game. In the past, there have—’ ‘I said I apologize, Jonas.’ Jonas sighed. It was no use. Of course Asher couldn’t understand. ‘I accept your apology, Asher,” he said wearily, (Lowry, p. 111). This quote shows the beginning of Jonas’s isolation. He’s starting to see how uninformed the rest of his community is about what the world was like. Jonas becomes frustrated because he has so many memories inside his brain that he’s forbidden to reveal. In order for the community to see what Jonas means, he would need to transfer his memories to them which is an action that he is not permitted to perform. This is why the Elders won’t let Jonas apply for a release. When you are released (killed, but no one knows at the time that when you’re released, you’re killed) and you’re a Receiver of Memory, all of your memories are released to the community. This happened once ten years before the story takes place, and it was said to be one of the most horrific events the community ever faced. The Elders don’t want the rest of the community to experience memories again and have more knowledge. They want the community to stay uninformed about the rest of the world, so the Elders can stay in power. If the rest of the community sees the world the way Jonas sees it, they will realize the silliness of the community, and will see the way the world used to be. This represents the beginning of Jonas’s isolation. Lowry shows us that the more knowledge about the outside world you have, the more isolated you feel, especially when you are surrounded by people who are ignorant.

From the beginning of the book, you can tell the Giver feels isolated for the same reasons Jonas does. The Elders enforce rules that make it hard for the Giver, the previous receiver of memory, to have a family or any connection to anyone. He has no one in the community to share his memories with besides Jonas. During one of his training sessions the Giver says, “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared,” (Lowry, p. 126). When you look at the Giver, he is isolated from everyone. During The Ceremony of Twelves, he’s sitting all by himself isolated from the rest of the community. The Elders make it hard for the Giver to have a family, which isolates him even more. They make sure that he has memories that he can’t share with anyone, so the relationship that the Giver would have with his family would be fake, just like the relationship between the Giver and and the rest of the community. Jonas too, feels more separated from his family now that he’s the receiver. He’s lying to them for the very first time, and isn’t sharing any of his thoughts or feelings. He can only connect with the Giver, and now Jonas and the Giver are more like family. The Elders see that Jonas and the Giver are different and decide to isolate them to prevent rebellion and stay in power. The Elders are trying to isolate the Giver as much as possible by making him more and more lonely and not letting him share his memories with anyone.

Jonas’s community is one where everyone supposedly lives in utopia; not experiencing any pain and by everyone being similar, with the exception of Jonas and the Giver. In truth, this is a dystopia. Utopia may only be achieved once there is no isolation. Once everyone encourages difference, utopia can be achieved. When Jonas is given memories of the past, he is isolated for knowledge of which everyone else is ignorant. Jonas must find a way to escape this community after learning the horrid truth about how the world used to be, and about the horrible things going on in the community that no one would ever suspect. The world in The Giver is a lot like the world we live in today. We stereotype and isolate too many people just because they’re different, instead of embracing everyone’s differences. Is it better to live in a community without worry, inequality, problems, emotion and with isolation for the few who are different? Or a community of knowledge, pain and individuality? Lowry leaves us with the notion that it’s better to live in a world with pain, emotion, individuality and freedom of choice. Is there another option that would be a true utopia, where differences are embraced, and isolation is non existent?