Giving Ideas

The Giver by Lois Lowry has been one of my favorite novels since I first read it when I was about 11 years old. I was intrigued by the idea of a distopian society, probably because politics were such a hot topic at that point among my friends, and I disagreed with many of them about the socializing of different aspects of society (...but that's a subject for a very different blog post and a very different blog). Anyway! The members of this blog are in the midst of crafting an ebook about the movement of literature into the digital age, specifically on the ereader Kindle and the power of the platforms Goodreads and Amazon. While reexamining The Giver with this in mind, I had a couple of thoughts that I will share with you in bulleted and outlined "stream of consciousness" format below. This is very rough, so let me know what you think! 

I should preface my bullet points by saying that I've already found that most of my ideas focus on relationships between people and how different social norms affect those relationships. So here we go!
I could focus on:

1. The fact that Jonas is more intelligent than the rest of the community because he has more access to information. This could be tied to the availability of books, etc. to the public (long tail idea). In the end, society is able to piece itself back together because everyone has access to the same information. Jonas is very young but has more information... interesting!

2. The Giver has experienced a lot from the "comfort" of his own home- without having to ever leave. There is something intriguing about the fact that we can consume so many books literally without having to move out of the same spot. It's incredible, but there's a sacrifice there. Sure, the Giver is a whole lot smarter than everybody else, but his life may have less satisfaction... for a number of reasons, but he doesn't get a whole lot of actual human contact and that takes a toll.

3. The lack of true feeling between characters. Jonas and the Giver are the only ones who have memories of the past and past traditions, and they are the only ones who are allowed to feel in order to preserve those traditions. There are two angles that I readily see here: (1) moving into the digital age is a movement away from the same kind of feeling (2) preserving memories (more easily preserved and accessed through technology) goes against the novel and enhances our ability to feel.

Thank Goodness for Flashlights

I'm 14 years old. It's 2 AM on a Wednesday night and I'm sobbing over a tragedy that isn't real and characters who don't exist. 

I'm laying on my bed on my right side with my right forearm curled around the back binding of a thick novel, my fingers holding the pages and binding in place. A propped-up flashlight's beam illuminates the left page, and when I finish that page, I'll prop myself up and switch the flashlight so it shines on the right page until it's time to lay back down. This subconscious back and fourth will probably continue for another hour. I'm exhausted, I have seven a.m. Bible Study in the morning, not to mention school, choir, student government, and dance, but I'm actually only thinking about the characters in this book and the injustices of humanity that plague their fictional lives. 

That's the power of a good book. 

I could have been reading anything from Jane Eyre to The Kite Runner that night, but it was very likely The Giver by Lois Lowry, a book I read for the first time when I was eleven years old, but continue to pick up off the shelf for a quick, thoughtful read every now and then. I vividly remember the first time I read The Giver, because I was captivated by the idea of a Utopian society which didn't allow for human relationships, emotions, or memories. Though I had read life changing novels before, such as Holes by Louis Sachar and Harry Potter by JK Rowling, The Giver was the first in a series of novels like Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies which would cause me to seriously reflect on my place in society and the human race. I felt so much anxiety and loneliness for Jonas, who was the lone "receiver" of human memories in a society which protected it's citizens from the pains and joys of history. I knew that the setting of the novel wasn't real, but reading it caused me to ask myself a lot of "what if's" and a lot of "Why's?" "What if I couldn't pick my own career?" "What if my parents didn't love each other?" "What if they didn't love me?" "Why do we tolerate so much evil in the world?" "Why does the government allow people to abuse their freedom to make decisions?" 

These are pretty big questions for an eleven year old, and I think it was while reading this novel I realized the artistic value of literature, and the fact that it could change me in ways beyond simply enjoying the consumption of literature, but continuing to ponder its inherit themes and questions outside of my actual reading of the novel. The Giver is the first novel I can remember striking me in a philosophical way, and it started me on a path of critical reading analysis that has shaped my educational and career choices as well as my outlook on life in general.