Literature Circle Blog-The Giver

Literature Circle-The Giver

EQ: What happens when someone is released?

My essential question is what happens to people when they get released? It ties in with  The Giver by Lois Lowry because it is a big question that Jonas has in most of the book. Jonas is very curious about what happens to the elderly, babies, and just citizens who get released. Just like everyone else he thought that being released was normal thing that everyone would have to experience when they get older. In the end it turned out that they actually give people a shot that kills them and then throw them down a chute. Realizing that everyone who ever released a person, including his father, is actually a murder.

The article that we thought related to The Giver was “North Korea: Life in cultural isolation” by BBC News, because in both communities everything controlled. The article stated, “When asked which world leaders - other than the Dear Leader - he admired, he quickly answered ‘Stalin and Mao Zedong!’ However, the students had not heard of Nelson Mandela.” ( paragraph 7-8) North Koreans only know about their leader who was a great person, not any other people who did great things in the World like Nelson Mandela or Malala Yousafzai. In The Giver the only leaders that they know is the Committee of Elders, because they choose everything for their citizens. The Committee of Elders pick where their citizens live, who they marry, their kids, and their jobs, they don’t choose anything.

North Korea and the community in The Giver don’t just have similarities, they also have differences. In The Giver all of the citizens know that there is other communities, but don’t know there is animals or different climates. In the article, North Koreans know that other countries exist, but they aren’t allowed to know what is happening in those countries. The article states, “North Korean TV only broadcasts hagiographies of the two leaders and pictures celebrating the country's army, model farms, model villages etc.” (paragraph 17) Just like they don’t know what happens in other countries, those same countries don’t know what is happening inside of North Korea a lot.