Hello, readers of the iCurion. I have recently read the giver quartet, a series of four books that are, Giver, Gathering blue, Messenger and finally Son. The author is Louis Lowry. These are released from 1993 to 2012. There is also a movie in YouTube movies and Netflix but not available in India.
I genuinely believe that these are amazing books I would recommend you read. These books are located in the future where world is no longer split up by large countries and superpowers, but small villages and communities. I believe that this part is historically inaccurate as civilization progresses the world tends to unify more due to imperialism and etc.
In the first book, the hero Jonas lives in a community called community. I would call this place a mirror to the 1984 book, but the author was not a terrible human in this book. The place had all the safeties and basic needs met for all citizens. However, there is no freedom of choice in the community.
In the community, there is a ritual for people of all ages from 1 – 12. Every age there is a new improvement such as the person gets a nice bicycle or toy. After that they, get some volunteer hours were all children help in the department they are interested in. So based on their talents and interests the council of elders assign a job for which they will train.
Jonas however has had interests and had volunteer hours in several different fields. He is worried that he might not get a nice and prestigious assignment. He has become the receiver of memory. Since Jonas is intelligent and kind boy, both a quality of the receiver. So, what is a receiver? It is a kind of advisory role. The receiver has the power to give and receive memories as though they had experienced it. They have experienced war, hunger, pain, happiness and several totally exotic things to the community. One person experiences all extreme memories so that they can advise the council of elders to reject or accept a new rule.
This was the begging for Jonas to understand the sinister backstage in the community a land of false comforts. He also finds out that a kind of pill is taken so that the members are rational obedient as they don’t experience love. If someone is old enough, has been disobeying the rules of the community or has any birth defects, they are released, which is basically a sugarcoated word for executed.
So, Jonas is slowly parting away from his respect towards the council of elders and the community. At the same time as Jonas’s father is a nurturer, He brings a child to his home as no parents are choosing the child. However, the child is forbidden to be part of their family. Since Gabriel the infant is defective with sleep issues they try to “release him”. Infuriated by this, Jonas steals his father’s bicycle and escapes the community, early in the morning.
After travelling a long-distance Jonas and Gabrielle are starving and have no water.
Now let me give few thoughts on this book and compare it to modern society. Many people use this book use it to justify anti-communist ideals. But if you think about it carefully, event in our society now we don’t really have much of a freedom of choice. From the birth itself people of India are split into castes and class. People of lower caste and class are deliberately sabotaged. If you are a child of a landless farmer, you are destined to be a poor farmer yourself. If you are very smart and resourceful you rise up, you still have competition with people of higher class and caste who are privileged and preferred to by default. I say that everyone having different sets of choices and opportunities and mostly heavily constrained for some people Just because of what their father and grandfather had done is not much better than the system in the community where it depends on your own talent to get a stand in society.
True freedom of choice for personal thing should be given to the person but, do we really have such thing in India? Our higher education and profession are chosen by our place in society, not exactly what we are good at or what we like.
This is wonderful book and one of my most favorites, but even gold given to a blind person is the same as giving lead to him. So, this book must be analyzed properly and not like most anti-communist reactionary literature. Evils of society and corruptions of man must be battled by man. Such evils must be destroyed by society with love and humanity not forced into them. We must share wisdom not by-passing memories for one person but society as a whole. True inequality and poverty can only be battled by revolution, and revolution is not to be caried out by a group of bureaucrats by the people who the revolution is fighting for. A better world is possible.
We will see what happened to Jonas and Gabrielle in upcoming book reviews in this website.
Thank you for reading my article!
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