Spoiler Alert!

My Language Arts class just finished reading The Giver, by Lois Lowry, about two weeks ago.  We read and discussed the themes in the novel.  Jonas lives in a community where they transferred to “Sameness.”  Sameness removed color, feelings, differences, and choices from the lives of people living in The Community.  Feelings and memories have been removed from The Community because of the truth and pain that they possess.  Some of the memories are joyful, like the memories of sailboat rides, sledding, and Christmas.  Others are painful or traumatizing, such as hunger, injury, or war.  I feel that making the choice to remove these memories was like making the choice to take the meaning out of life.  People of The Community are missing out on some of the beauty of life.  What is life if we can’t make our own decisions and act for ourselves?  What is life without pain?  What is life if we can’t experience true love, or the pain of learning a lesson the hard way?

~laurenc604