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Memories In The Giver, By Lois Lowry

Decent Essays

No memories! Nobody in Jonas’ community has memories.Thanks to the receiver. The receiver is there to store the memories of the community so there is nothing but peace. It’s believed that memories were dangerous and would cause conflict or create something opposite of their so called “utopia”. In The Giver, by Lois Lowry, Jonas learns the power of memories through joy, sorrow, and pain. The best type of memories, joy, was the first memory given to Jonas. The Giver first gave Jonas the memory of snow where we would also go sledding. Once Jonas started sledding down the hill he thought to himself, “The experience explained itself to him” (Lowry 103). Sledding down the hill was thrilling and very exciting. That experience showed him the joy of memories and …show more content…

He watched a live elephant get shot and killed and also receives a memory of death. “He felt himself overwhelmed with a new perception of the color he knew as red” (Lowry 126). The death of the poor elephant and the pain of the dead elephants mate was heartbreaking. The poachers killed the elephant for its tusks and let the dead body rest there in the wild. Seeing an animal killed would be horrifying. Jonas also received a memory where he had to watch a boy decease after suffering wounds from war. After the boy Jonas helped passed away, he heard the disturbance of warfare, “the cries of wounded men, the cries begging for water and for Mother and for death. Horses lying on the ground shrieked , raised their heads, and stabbed randomly toward the sky with their hooves. Jonas could hear the thud of cannons” (Lowry 151). All of the sights and sounds of warfare were extremely disturbing. This memory was causing great suffering to The Giver and needed to be passed to be someone else. Unfortunately as the receiver, Jonas had to take this sorrowful memory as is own. Jonas learns how powerful sorrow is and the emotional pain it can

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