Never Let Me Go : The Giver
In the novel Never Let Me Go, the main theme revolves around the idea of finding your place in a dystopian society. Main characters Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy find themselves living a life that has been entirely planned out for them. They get no choice in what career they get to have, not that they actually get a career at all, but they are forced to become carers of donors and then eventually donors. As clones of regular people from the outside world, they are biologically engineered for the purpose of donated organs to those who need them. Another factor of being clones is the fact that Kathy, Ruth and Tommy all have what they call "possibles" living in the real world. These "possibles" are basically the people who they were cloned from. They have all always been curious about who they are, what their future includes, and why they are the way they are. This need for the truth becomes a blind wanting for information that they probably don't want to hear. They fear the truth, yet they crave it.
This idea of fearing the truth yet wanting to know it also applies to the novel The Giver. The main character Jonas also faces the challenge of accepting the fact that the truth comes with pain. The truth doesn't come with pure relief and happiness. The truth sets secrets free that aren't necessary for people to hear. So when Jonas is given the memories in his training as the Receiver, he is taken aback by the fact that society and humanity can elicit so much pain among the population.
This realization rivals the one that Ruth shared with Kathy and Tommy about their possibles. Ruth says that their possibles will never be someone who works in an office or has a nice and normal life; their possible is going to be someone who is broken in the eyes of society such as the homeless, porn stars, etc. This is showing Ruth, Kathy and Tommy that they really aren't anything more than what they were copied from, ultimately degrading them in a way that is unimaginable. This connects to Jonas's realization because the pain that he experiences after being transferred the memories shows him that the world he knows and grew up in is nothing like he imagined. he is stripped of his innocence and ignorance which ultimately opens his eyes and changes his perspective on the people in the world, and the world itself, that he lives with.
This idea of fearing the truth yet wanting to know it also applies to the novel The Giver. The main character Jonas also faces the challenge of accepting the fact that the truth comes with pain. The truth doesn't come with pure relief and happiness. The truth sets secrets free that aren't necessary for people to hear. So when Jonas is given the memories in his training as the Receiver, he is taken aback by the fact that society and humanity can elicit so much pain among the population.
This realization rivals the one that Ruth shared with Kathy and Tommy about their possibles. Ruth says that their possibles will never be someone who works in an office or has a nice and normal life; their possible is going to be someone who is broken in the eyes of society such as the homeless, porn stars, etc. This is showing Ruth, Kathy and Tommy that they really aren't anything more than what they were copied from, ultimately degrading them in a way that is unimaginable. This connects to Jonas's realization because the pain that he experiences after being transferred the memories shows him that the world he knows and grew up in is nothing like he imagined. he is stripped of his innocence and ignorance which ultimately opens his eyes and changes his perspective on the people in the world, and the world itself, that he lives with.
An interesting way to further this discussion would be to compare how Jonas handles or is effected by hearing (or in his case "experiencing" / "being given") the truth of his existence against the way Kathy, Ruth and Tommy all cope with the inevitable and dark truth of their existence. The first example that comes to mind would be how Tommy creates little drawings in order to try to prolong his time with Kathy, similarly to how Jonas uses his newfound knowledge to save Gabriel from being released, prolonging their time together.
ReplyDeleteI like how you talked about fearing the truth and how the character's reactions contrast, because Jonas's was so different from Kathy's. I thought this also could've been because Kathy was brought up knowing she would die, whereas for Jonas death was almost a completely foreign concept. I think it also would've been interesting if you talked about how the different societies use death, since I thought both Never Let Me Go and The Giver sort of preserved life to preserve other people's happiness, just one with delaying death and the other with hiding it.
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