![]() He will be able to apply for a spouse and children (The Giver's spouse now lives with other Childless Adults), but his life will be strained. Through The Giver's answers, he learns about the kind of life he can look forward to as the Receiver of Memory. Jonas becomes accustomed to asking The Giver questions. He tries to "transmit the awareness of red." Asher, feeling quite uncomfortable, moves away, and Jonas, sighing, makes up a story about the flowers wilting and needing water. Disregarding the rule that it is rude for a person to touch anyone who is not part of the person's family unit, Jonas puts his hands on Asher's shoulders and instructs him to look at the flowers. Disappointed, Jonas removes his hands from their shoulders.Īnother illustration of Jonas' trying to break community members of their Sameness occurs when he attempts to show the color red to Asher, who is standing with Jonas near a flowerbed of bright red geraniums. However, Lily complains that Jonas is hurting her, and Jonas' father never responds. Jonas touches each of them on the shoulder, trying to give each of them the " being" of a real elephant. ![]() The idea comes to him one evening when Lily is playing with her comfort object, which is a stuffed elephant, while Jonas' father is combing Lily's hair. After receiving the memory about the elephant hunt, he tries to share his newfound knowledge of elephants with Lily and his father. In small ways, Jonas attempts to change people. It's what they've chosen." Jonas has a difficult time understanding why people would choose to live their lives as unthinking, unfeeling robots, preferring that way of life because it is safe and secure over individuality and the freedom to make choices and, yes, even mistakes. Life here is so orderly, so predictable - so painless. The Giver tells him that the people "don't want change. Jonas also has a conflict with the entire community. It frustrates him that they are satisfied with their painless, colorless, routine lives. ![]() He realizes that if his friends and family would receive memories and thereby share the burden of the pain, then their lives would be rich and fulfilled. Also, he is angry and frustrated because he wants to change things for his peers, but he doesn't know how. He has learned too much and gained too much wisdom, and he now knows that life is meaningless without memories. He experiences an inner conflict: On one hand, he wants to go back to the old, insulated, familiar way of life on the other hand, he knows that he can't. He feels frustrated and angry as he realizes that his life will never be "ordinary" again. He was silent." Jonas has experienced human death for the first time.Īfter receiving these memories, Jonas changes. During this memory, he watches a "wild-eyed horse, its bridle torn and dangling, frantically through the mounds of men, tossing its head, whinnying in panic." Jonas gives water to a wounded boy in the warfare memory and sees the boy die, a "dull blankness slowly across his eyes. The Giver now includes pain in Jonas' everyday training, and, finally, Jonas receives the worst memory of all: the memory of warfare and death. In his agony he perceived the word 'fire' and felt flames licking at the torn bone and flesh." After feeling such intense physical pain, Jonas knows that the people in the community don't really know what pain is. It was as if a hatchet lay lodged in his leg, slicing through each nerve with a hot blade. In the next painful memory conveyed in these chapters, Jonas breaks his leg while riding downhill on a sled and learns about physical pain: "He gasped. Jonas has never before witnessed or experienced the raw emotional pain that is often felt as a result of the death of a loved one Jonas has never experienced death. Another elephant walks up to the dead elephant's mutilated body and seemingly comforts the elephant by stroking the dead animal with its trunk and then by covering the elephant with branches. In Chapter 13, The Giver transmits a painful memory of an elephant hunt to Jonas, during which an elephant is shot and killed for its tusks. Lowry's descriptions and imagery are similar to that found in poetry. These painful memories, like the pleasurable memories, are lyrical. ![]() ![]() Because The Giver must unload some of the pain that he carries, he shares memories of excruciating pain with Jonas. Jonas spends this free time by himself, disappointed and worried about his future and about The Giver. Some days, The Giver sends Jonas away because The Giver is in too much pain to be able to train Jonas. Throughout these chapters, Jonas' character grows in complexity as he gains wisdom from the many memories that The Giver transmits to him. ![]()
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