Reflection of The Giver

After finishing the book, I was totally shocked and silent, there were so many feelings coming out that were hard to define, especially due to the ambiguous ending, it make us confused, however, it also helped me think in deeper ways.

The story was describing a perfect world without negative things and substances, people there strictly followed the main rule of “Sameness”. Jonas was anxious about the ceremony of twelfth, he would be assigned a job that determined his lifetime career by elders' observation. Surprisingly, the chief elder announced his assignment as a receiver of memory at the ceremony, that was the most respectful job in the community. People were afraid to face misery, they chose to get rid of the memories, took away mental feelings from people. Thus, his duty was to hold those memories dated back in the past that had once existed, he met the giver for his training. During the process, he gradually knew that the place he lived in was abnormal. Therefore, Jonas decided to escape.

It was really adventurous, but it looked a bit sad. Although people lived under good conditions and well-arranged schedules, they didn't have the freedom to pursue themselves. They were unknowing to feelings and invisible to colors, therefore, they didn't even have the ability to pursue. I think this was a bit similar to communistic country, people have equal economic condition, but the authorities conduct totalitarian for the purpose of preventing chaos, they formulated strict rules to control citizens and their minds, there was no democracy and personal mind.

I really approve of Jonas’ courage to escape from the over perfect world, he broke the rules to find his true self, but it was controversial for him to abandon his parents and friends in order to have freedom and his own mind. As a receiver of memory, he was responsible for handling chaos; in contrast, he brought about mess. Also, he initially tried to convince the giver to go with him, he didn’t think of citizens’ fear. It was really selfish of him to give up everything to achieve his goal. On the other hand, it was really self-centered of everyone to make Jonas have the burdens that they didn’t want to suffer. As an old saying goes, “Do to others as you would be done by.”, apparently they made someone tolerate bad things they didn’t want. Everything has its pros and cons, it depends on the person’s decision. People considered their lives as important things, but Jonas wanted to have freedom. It was really hard to accurately say they were ethical or not, it was that they had their own perspective.

When I was reading, the most impressive thing was the word “release”, the plots just mentioned that “release” was an honorable ceremony to the old, a punishment to someone who made mistakes. At first I just regarded it as making people away from the community, but I finally realized that it was “euthanasia” while Jonas received the memory. This issue has been disputed among people., euthanasia has been used on human whose disease is incurable or less likely to survive, as a relief to ease pain and avoid medication under agreement. The meaning of release was to make an excuse forcing people to be dead. Obviously it violates the ethics, since life is one of the major human rights. Besides, they made people die without listening to people’s mind and even against the natural principle of death. It was an useful way to prevent over-increasing population, however, it is not appropriate to kill people who were innocent.

I love the book really much, because it fully presents us the opposition of utopia, and make us think about when we thrive to live a better life, we omit the other thing that really can bring us happiness and hope. As the technology grows, we have more convenient tools to help improve our life quality, but it causes people being stressed out so as to produce new thing. We should be really grateful about the things and the resources we have, on account of them, we are not controlled by irrational regulations, and fortunately we are totally free.