第四名
姓  名 林奕馨 學  校 私立協同高級中學 年  級 二 年 乙 班

 

 

Perfect or Not is Determined by Our Faith

Will there ever be an ideal world without any starvation and unemployment? Will there ever be a peaceful world without any war or pain? Will there ever be a perfect world without any mistakes? In the book The Giver, the author depicted the community as a Utopia, where the birth rate is easily controlled, so there will not be overpopulation that may lead to starvation. The job opportunities are also equally assigned to each person, so there will not be any unemployment. People in the community are prohibited from acquiring the knowledge of the outside world. Therefore, most of the people embrace happiness and do not suffer from pain, due to the fact that they don’t possess those painful memories.

On the other hand, Jonas, the one who is chosen to take the burden of pain and responsibility, explores various experiences of color, music, beautiful scenery, and the feeling of love, which no one can have ever experienced in the community. However, this is also what sets Jonas apart from his friends. He begins to learn about the pain of war, of death, of loss, and people start to realize his weird behavior. Like Jonas, sometimes I have the feeling of being different from other people. I choose what I believe is right and run for it, but often times it’s contradictory with others’ belief. For instance, the major I want to study contradicts my parents’ expectation, the perspective of group projects I have is against my team members, and my value of life differs from that of my friends. They have sprawled the loneliness all over my mind, making me feel confused, as if no one can ever understand me.

However, I’’m deeply struck by what Jonas struggled for at the end of the story, and my courage is plucked up. After learning that his community is using the “release” system to send people away, which is just to inject poison to the person’s body and cause death, Jonas finds himself unable to bear this kind of inhumanity anymore and chooses to run away from it. Although he knows that escaping from the community is synonymous with leaving for dangers, starvation, and the possibility of death, just like we know that being ourselves might cause criticism, he still goes for where he believes justice is. This makes me associate with the conflicts between us and the real world. In our life, we need to deal with different voices every now and then. Sometimes we don’t know which voice we should listen to. Sometimes, we can’t even hear our own voice. But as a matter of fact , the voice of truth is just hidden deep inside our heart. Stepping out of our comfort zone, leaving the environment we are familiar with, sure sounds adventurous. But only if we devote ourselves to what we truly believe and head for our dreams, miracles do happen. Therefore, I believe in the end Jonas arrives where he thinks the true paradise is.

After reading the whole story, I discover that even if the community sounds like a perfect world, I will choose to live in where I belong now. Since the whole community is based on the sameness, where there are no options for matches and jobs, it makes less difference of who you are or what your life is. I believe the interesting part of life is constructed on the variation and changeability. Though it’s certainly possible that making decisions on our own may lead to mistakes, aren’t we, the humans, standing on the foundation of our ancestors’ numerous mistakes and corrections? Aren’t we supposed to learn from previous failures and move step by step toward success? Otherwise, we may fall into the trap of being like the people in The Giver’s community, being ignorant and having no knowledge to face the situation when crisis approaches. After all, Human knowledge is accumulated little by little through experiences, be it pleasant or unpleasant.