Reaction Writing/ The Giver

No true feelings in the world.

No stress in the world.

However

No choice in the world.

Do you want to live in this world?

At the time I was reading the back cover of the book, “The Giver” written by Lois Lowry, my answer was absolutely yes!!!!!!!!

I envied it because I was depressed about my bad score in the report card. I got tired of thinking about my future such as what job I want to get, or what I should do during university life. I thought, through reading this book, I could escape from the reality of my life.

This book’s world is completely opposite from ours in mainly two points.

Firstly, everything in people’s whole life is controlled and ruled by the community, for example the job you will take, or the children you will receive after you’re married. People in this world should obey the rules, and if they broke those rules, they will be punished.

Secondary, they don’t know the true feelings of fear or happiness because they don’t have memory of war or love, which happened before they were born. They are living in present time, not knowing the existence of the past time or the future time.

The community of this world made it like this system to keep the peace, and not to injure people by the painful feelings.

They are like robots in both good and bad sense of the word.

The main character in this book is Jonas, whose age is twelve, living in this controlled world. At the ceremony, he received the assignment called “The Receiver of Memory”. He will receive all the memories from The Giver. This was very honorable job because he could only held the past memory. Why this assignment was necessary? The reason is when people in the world claimed to change their rules, The Receiver of Memory needed to give final decision by using his wisdom of the past memories.

Through the training of this assignment, Jonas gradually felt painful and lonely. He started to think that all the people in his community should know the true feelings and the past memory. Therefore, he tried to change his world.

The interesting part of this book is the meaning of its title. I was wondering why the title is “The Giver” though Jonas’ assignment is “The Receiver of Memory”. At first I thought the title would be more appropriate if it was “The Receiver”. Although, through reading the whole book, I thought that Jonas successfully changed his world by becoming “The Giver of Memory” to all the people in his community.

As you read this book, you will notice that its ending is not clear. This is very interesting because we can imagine it in diverse ways.

As I read this book to the end, I thought even though our world is stressful, I want to be in this situation for my whole life. I sometimes envy Jonas’ world, but I think we can acquire the true happiness when we experienced the true sadness. Both negative and positive feelings are important for people.

Now, my answer to the question, do you want to live in this controlled world? , is no!

I hope this reaction writing helps you to know which part of  this book is interesting!Thank you:)