The First Draft of the Mastery Reader Response
"Frightening, isn't it?" The Giver said.
Jonas chuckled. "Very frightening. I can't even imagine it. We have to protect people from wrong choices."
"It's safer."
"Yes," Jonas agreed. "Much safer." (124, Lowry)
I chose to talk about this particular quotation. There are some reasons for that. For instance, the first and the most crucial one is that this quotation emphasizes one of the themes of the book "The Giver".
I want to start by stating the theme this quotation is connected to. "Choices come with risks and the risks are keys for freedom." In the quotation, The giver and Jonas were talking about how will letting the community live their lives according to their choices will result. Of course, since there is no place for imperfection in this community, the idea of letting the citizens free sounds absurd to them. As we all know in real life, people make their own choices and shape their future. While determining what we are going to do, there is a chance that we might choose the wrong act. In some cases, those acts are not that important and don't have a significant impact on others' lives but in some other cases, our choices might lead us to some problems that are hard to deal with. As you can see, the community of elders wanted to have full control over the community so they wanted to decrease the number of mistakes made by the citizens. Therefore, they didn't let them choose any of their actions such as choosing their spouse or jobs. Talking about spouses, I can give an example of why the people in the community aren't let to choose their spouses. Although, we can't say that everything is perfect in this community. In this community, "Sameness" is perceived as perfection but when compared to the real world. The reality is completely contrasted. For instance, I can talk about my ideas of a perfect world. From my point of view, the perfect world is a place everyone can make choices without making severe impacts on others' lives and people have the right to share their ideas with the world. Because when we look at the world we are currently living in, we can see that it is not stable meaning it develops a lot in just a short range of time. I can summarize my view of a perfect world by saying that nothing stays the same and renew according to time's requirements and common sense.
The last thing I want to talk about is the connection between "The Giver" and the book "1984" by George Orwell. Overall, I can clearly say that those two books are similar to each other in many ways but now I want to focus on the quotation. In 1984, we can see that there is also an oppressive government. For instance, here is a quotation from the book "Big Brother is watching you." This quotation shows that whatever sin or anything that is considered inappropriate by the government will be known because you are being watched at all times. As well as The Giver, in "1984" people in the community don't have the right to make their own choices and it is believed that it is for the greater good.
In conclusion, "The Giver" interprets that people attempt to reach perfection by making everything the same, so any possible problems will
be prevented. As we understand from the book, this only leads to a world where people don't even have any freedom or feelings.