Examples Of Dystopia In The Giver

Words: 495
Pages: 2

Is “The Giver” a Utopia or Dystopia?

What really is a utopia? Dictionary.com defines a utopia as “An ideal place or state.”

Keep that in mind while I tell you more about “The Giver”. “The Giver” is written by Lois

Lowry in 1913. It is about a boy named Jonas. Jonas was assigned the job of being

Reciever of Memories. The Receiver of Memories is meant to get memories from The

Giver and keep them for knowledge until the next receiver comes along. During the

process of receiving, Jonas learns a lot of bad things about the community and also all

the secrets hidden within the community. “The Giver” is neither a dystopia or a utopia

because there is no freedom, they have enough food, jobs and education for everyone

and they hide the
…show more content…
In the book Jonas was talking about one of his dreams at

the “Dream-Telling” one morning. Jonas’ father asked what his strongest feeling was and

Jonas said “The wanting” (54). After that his mom gave him pills which are meant to be

“Treatment”. They use the pills to turn off his hormones, his natural hormones. They are

making him inhuman. This is a very dystopian feature of the community in “The Giver.”

Now to a more utopian feature.

Everyone in “The Giver” have everything they need to survive. All children have

education, every adult has a workplace and every family has enough food to support

themselves. While Jonas was running away from the community, he “ robbed the

community of food: a very serious crime, even though what he had taken were

leftovers.” Implying that there were enough leftovers to steal, so everyone got a

generous amount of food, unlike our world where some people are starving while others

Are dining like royals. This aspect in the community is utopian because then the people

have healthy amounts of energy.

“The community” hides the fact of death from people. By doing this grief