The Giver byLois Lowry

I loved this book! The giver is about a boy named Jonas whose whole life is perfectly under control until he reaches the age where he is considered an adult. He is given a special job in his community where he is taught to experience things that he never knew such as color and emotions. With his new knowledge he begins to question his life as he knows it.

When I started reading this book I wasn't looking forward to it because I knew I had read it before in school and my general attitude towards books that are required isn't very good (even though I do like to read). But once I started I didn't put it down and I read it as fast as I could because I enjoyed it so much. First of all, I haven't read a book that isn't for school or a text book not for class in a long time so it was nice to be taken to a different place. The whole concept of Jonas's community is intriging and reminds me of things in my life that maybe I take for granted like choice. I can't imagine a world where you can't choose things everyday like I can and yet there are many places in the world that are just like that. There are also cultures that have every part of their life set up for them. It provided me with a new insight as to what exactly that might be like.

Also, I could NOT live without color after having known it. I am not talking about if I went blind, I am talking about if everything went black and white. Part of being an indivdual to me is as simple as waking up in the morning and putting on clothes that you want. You have your choice of patterns, fabrics, and style but none seem as important as color.

I am a person that has had to deal with a lot of emotions (as we all have) many of which are too personal for this classes blog. But the lack of feeling emotions was so interesting to me. I wouldn't trade what we feel for the world even though I wish we could do without some like sadness.

I also liked the idea of how Jonas felt our history and new experiences instead of just reading about it. I personally as a learner learn and interperate things better when I am doing them rather than just reading about them so I think it would be awesome if we got to do what Jonas did like when he experieced snow and the sleigh. I would like to do that but skydiving!

The concept of family was also one that got me thinking. Today, so many people are getting divorced and creating new families over again that as a society I think that we have redefined the word family. This is what was done in the book as well. It challenges what we know about family. In the book, there is the mom and dad and both are assigned 2 kids and 2 kids only. The mom and dad don't have a physically relationship because seeing eachothers "nakedness" is forbidden, so there wouldn't be any cheating on your spouse or broken homes. But the absence of grandparents was also weird. I knwo amny people grow up with only a few grandparents or none at all, but I was lucky enough to have nearly 20 years with 4 grandparents and even about 10 years with a great-grandma. I couldn't imagine not learning and benefiting from them. They are role model figures.

This book challenges so many ideas of society today. Often we wish things like we could feel no pain, but without pain I don't think that you would truly enjoy feeling good. I feel like I could go on and on analyzing this book and writing about it. using this book in school would be amazing because so much can come from it. You could structure almost any subject to fit the book.