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Love
"Father? Mother?" Jonas asked tentatively after the evening meal. "I have a question to ask you."
"What is it, Jonas?" his father asked.
He made himself say the words, though he felt flushed with embarrassment. He had rehearsed them in his mind all the way home from the Annex.
"Do you love me?"
There was awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You of all people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalised word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. YOu could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, "Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes'."
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents.
Reflections
After reading this extract, I really felt a mixture of emotions--pity, shock and much more, but the most I felt was pity. I was really moved. We often take our parents' love for granted, thinking that it is natural and that we deserve it, in some way. In The Giver, however, the children do not receive love from their parents. Instead, they receive things like recognition, pride, even enjoyment; anything, but love.
Afte reading this I not only felt sorry for Jonas, but also for people like Asher and Fiona as well. This way of living in a world devoid of any feelings like love was extremely cruel, not only toward the children, but also toward the parents. From this I deduced that the parents the children were living with were actually not their real parents. Even if they were, however, there was a strong sense of distance. Homes were referred to as "family dwellings" in the Giver, and words like love were considered as inappropriate, or vague. The most heart-wrenching part about this entire thing was that Jonas and the Giver were the only people who were exposed and actually knew love. The community might have been under the impression that upon removing things like familial and parental love, forcing people to have sameness would keep the people safe, and everyone would live in peace; but they were wrong in removing such things, as that only made the people live in ignorance their whole lives, about the power of familial love.
The people in the community just felt it was a way of life, and felt that the absence of love was not really a big deal.
After reading this extract, I felt a large surge of appreciation toward my family and parents, especially. Our world may not be as peaceful, controlled or as safe as the world portrayed in the Giver, but at least we have things like snow, colour, laughter and music, which are actually part of our lives without us knowing it. Therefore, from this extract I learned and understood a lot, and that's why I chose to post it on my blog.
I hope my readers will enjoy the extract or book as much as I have, appreciate our world, and feel thankful that it is not the so-called Utopia portrayed in the Giver, as the more people try to construct their own Utopia, the more dis-Utopian it turns out to be.
AlysiaLabels: Love
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Love
"Father? Mother?" Jonas asked tentatively after the evening meal. "I have a question to ask you."
"What is it, Jonas?" his father asked.
He made himself say the words, though he felt flushed with embarrassment. He had rehearsed them in his mind all the way home from the Annex.
"Do you love me?"
There was awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You of all people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalised word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. YOu could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, "Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes'."
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents.
Reflections
After reading this extract, I really felt a mixture of emotions--pity, shock and much more, but the most I felt was pity. I was really moved. We often take our parents' love for granted, thinking that it is natural and that we deserve it, in some way. In The Giver, however, the children do not receive love from their parents. Instead, they receive things like recognition, pride, even enjoyment; anything, but love.
Afte reading this I not only felt sorry for Jonas, but also for people like Asher and Fiona as well. This way of living in a world devoid of any feelings like love was extremely cruel, not only toward the children, but also toward the parents. From this I deduced that the parents the children were living with were actually not their real parents. Even if they were, however, there was a strong sense of distance. Homes were referred to as "family dwellings" in the Giver, and words like love were considered as inappropriate, or vague. The most heart-wrenching part about this entire thing was that Jonas and the Giver were the only people who were exposed and actually knew love. The community might have been under the impression that upon removing things like familial and parental love, forcing people to have sameness would keep the people safe, and everyone would live in peace; but they were wrong in removing such things, as that only made the people live in ignorance their whole lives, about the power of familial love.
The people in the community just felt it was a way of life, and felt that the absence of love was not really a big deal.
After reading this extract, I felt a large surge of appreciation toward my family and parents, especially. Our world may not be as peaceful, controlled or as safe as the world portrayed in the Giver, but at least we have things like snow, colour, laughter and music, which are actually part of our lives without us knowing it. Therefore, from this extract I learned and understood a lot, and that's why I chose to post it on my blog.
I hope my readers will enjoy the extract or book as much as I have, appreciate our world, and feel thankful that it is not the so-called Utopia portrayed in the Giver, as the more people try to construct their own Utopia, the more dis-Utopian it turns out to be.
AlysiaLabels: Love
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