Book Essay Twin Falls

J. Horrocks

L390

April 13, 2006

Words, Their Replacements, and Their Identity in Memory within The Giver

In The Giver, Lois Lowry creates an uncomfortable world for the reader and Jonas as she limits the language of the people in it. As well, as the reader learns, people in the world of The Giver do not even understand some things that we take for granted. Things like color and love are not only mysteries to these people, but completely frightening and painful in a way. The idea of giving memories and using memory as a form of language that has not been thoroughly uncovered gives The Giver its medium and thereby, its deeper understanding of how language works to not only define people, but for them to thoroughly understand it and remember what it means and why.

In the world of The Giver, the reader is given lots of new terminology and ideas that are to be used within the book through particular forms of language. These include ideas like “the Ceremony of Twelve,” the “Nurterers” and “the Ceremony of Release.” All of these terms are merely replacements for other words and phrases we have in our own language, but there’s an understanding within the terminology of The Giver that seems to be much darker than that of the terminology that the reader may use on a daily basis. Take “the Ceremony of Release,” for example. This supposed “Ceremony” is hardly anything like that. In fact, it’s a euphemism to keep people in the dark about the truth of the matter. The “Ceremony of Release” is actually the death and destruction of a child who is not growing in the “correct direction” of the societal standards within the book. Language here is being used as a form of control and a barrier in which people will be “protected” from the truth of the matter. Jonas and his family, in the beginning, are entirely absorbed in the world around them, believing almost all they’re told (or it is so to seem) and living life with the idea that anything outside their...