The Community in "The Giver"

To begin with, almost everyone in the community in The Giver by Lois Lowry are being controlled by the Elders, and no one can make decisions for themselves. Plus, they don’t even know their being controlled. Control is a good thing, but if it becomes too much or too little control than that is not good. Imagine a world with no control where anyone can do whatever they want to do. That would probably be very crazy and not a good place to live. Or imagine a world where they are always controlled and they can’t make any decisions, that would also probably not be a very fun place to live. In the real world people are not being controlled that much which is a good thing, but that is the exact opposite for the community in The Giver.

When There Is No Place Without Control

In the community of The Giver, everyone is being controlled except for the Elders. The Elders are supposed to try to make all the decisions, with some help from the receiver of memories, and keep the community “perfect.” This means that no one can risk making a bad decision. Although this also means that no one can make good decisions. But it is good to make bad decisions so they can learn from their mistakes. However, most people don’t know that their being controlled because they don’t learn about it because the Elders don’t want them to know that their being controlled and they don’t know what it means. One example is when Jonas’s dad performed the release on the twin baby, he probably did not want to kill the baby but he had to because the Elders chose that job for him in the ceremony of twelves. His job was to take care of all the babies that have not been named and assigned a family unit, sometimes he had to perform release on babies.

One place in The Giver where there’s a lot of control is in the family dwellings. Some of the rules are that the parents can only have two children one girl and one boy, they have to take pills when they get stirrings, they can’t read any books accept the the book of rules and your school books, they can not lie too anyone. Many of those rules are not the same in the real world, like that they can only have two kids. Because in the real world, adults can have as many kids as they want, they don’t even need to have any kids if they don’t want to. One rule that some parents have in their house is that they can’t lie, although many kids probably don’t follow that rule. This rule is one of the rules that people have in The Giver’s community as well in the real world. Also in the real world at their house you probably can do a lot of things freely without their parents asking what they were doing. Some of these rules make sense and are reasonable but other rules I don’t think that are necessary like they have to be 9 years old in order to ride a bike. This shows that in their community their is a lot of control of everything.

Another place in The Giver where there’s a lot of control is at school. If your late to school they must apologize, it’s not an option not to apologize. In the real world your teacher would probably ask why they were late and than they would continue as if it did not happen. This is one rule that I think is strange and not needed. Imagine a world where they have to apologize for everything wrong they do, like dropping a pencil on the ground and apologizing for it that would probably be a very unpleasant place to live.

It is very hard to imagine a world with total control or no control. But it’s obvious that it would be very different from our world. However it is hard to believe is that The Giver’s community has total control over mostly everyone and no one can make their own decision. One place where there’s a lot of control is at school and in there family dwelling. This shows that it is not good to have too much control and to have no control.