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Examples Of Powerlessness In The Giver

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The Assumptions of Power, Powerlessness, and Existentialism in Louis Lowry’s The Giver
In Lois Lowry’s book The Giver, there is a pivotal scene where Jonas, the plot’s main character, was bound to being the new receiver of his community. The community is a place where there is no war, no fear, or pain. The community could not make choices and the members of the community did not have any feelings. As the plot progresses, the chief elder provided the children with their perspective roles in the community in the Ceremony of Twelve. In the description of the scene, the chief elder skipped over Jonas when giving the roles of the community. Following a series of indirect emotional pleas from Jonas and the community, the Chief Elder welcomed Jonas …show more content…

. .” (2004) In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, roles in the community fills the text, and the transfer of power becomes obvious in these essential scenes of disapproving these roles. In this paper, I will discuss and question of how does reading against the text compare to ideologies of surfacing political assumptions of power and powerlessness during this era? Specifically how the textuality of transfer, recovery, and declaration of power evolves as an existentialist, reiteration of identity in The …show more content…

Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher and key figure in the philosophy of existentialism. This philosophy deals with the idea of “the existence of the individual, who, being free and responsible, is held to be what he makes himself by the self-development of his essence through acts of the will” (OED). In The Giver, themes of existentialism deals with the importance of the individual, in which questions such as “What does it mean to be existing as a human being?” are asked.

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