Individuality, as found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is defined as total character peculiar to and distinguishing an individual from others (“Individuality”), or simply put, someone’s personality that sets them apart from everyone else. This trend of individuality seems to be the forefront of Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver. In The Giver, the young protagonist, Jonas (and everyone else) live in what turns from a utopian community in the beginning, into a dystopian community full of sameness and lack of self-control and individuality. They are told when to wake up, eat, and sleep, and have their words, clothing, and even family life controlled by the higher-up elders of the community. Jonas starts realizing that his perfect world is not what it seems, and that what he has learned about the world’s past from The Receiver, a person that holds these memories, is worth fighting for (Lois Lowry). This trend of being the singular person, being different and having personality, and standing out from a crowd whether it be through looks, music, identity, or personality is throughout the novel. In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the main character Jonas goes through internal and external conflicts regarding individuality through different modes, such as the ability to have memory, seeing color, and being subjectively normal in a sense of today’s society, in contrast with his own community.
One quote that pops out in Leona E. Tyler’s book Individuality is: “In computer terms, one does what one is ‘programmed’ to do” (Tyler 107).The giver is clearly seen as a group of people that are controlled, not only by the elders in command but by past history, specifically the parts of history that focused on the bad. Tyler’s imagery on being programmed was how Jonas felt before and especially after he became the Receiver of Memory. He felt as though he could not make conscious choices pertaining to his own and his family’s future. He, and everyone else, is programmed to do everything as to better the community and themselves from what they saw as bad, in reality it was just being different. Another interesting quote that pertains to individuality is how Tyler focuses on children. She says that learning and distinguishing comes from “very early to distinguish the mother’s face from all of the other faces it sees” (Tyler 108). These “programmable” actions and tendencies that the citizens have are clearly external conflicts implemented by the elders of the community, for example, the babies born to birthmothers. Children are not birthed by their mothers, or into the assigned families; birthing babies was seen as a disgraceful job placed onto women who did not fit a particular job. The birthmothers were seen as vessels, another conflict of individuality, that did not even get the chance of looking at or holding their child before being taken away from them. Children did not have that privilege of realizing their true mothers, being placed with people who did not look like them or shared any emotional traits. Another problem with raising the children in the community, pertaining to feeling like a program, is the way that babies are even selected. They must weight a certain weight, play for a certain time, and not cause as much trouble as other children, before being given to a family. The child is supposed to be the most wholistic being, able to express itself with nothing holding them ack, like Ralph Waldo Emerson explained. However, they seem to be programmed from birth.
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In Susan Stewart’s article titled “A Return to Normal: Lois Lowry’s The Giver”, her main standpoint of where everything stems from, whether that be Jonas’ actions or what the leaders want to take away, is choice and whether or not make it for themselves. In specifics, Stewart deems Jonas’ decisions to give back the memories to the community by leaving as conservative. She expresses that normally, the outside would deem it radical, or the most courageous act ever witnessed; but, according to Stewart “[Jonas’] flight from his community is nothing less than a return to the humanist subject position many readers occupy” currently, or when reading the novel (Stewart 25). As humans, especially those in countries where there is a freedom to a majority, the “normal” as it seems is receiving the memories back. Leaving the gain something for the greater good is what people today see in politics, philanthropy, and religion. It only seems like an internal conflict for Jonas to make because he never had that choice to begin with, making it radical to The Giver and those who knew of his plan, including Jonas. This can be further explained by a quote from Catherine Belsey saying, “Unified, knowing, and autonomous, the human being seeks a political system which guarantees freedom of choice” (qtd. In Stewart 25). Choice is subjective, leaving it as an internal conflict, like how Jonas struggled with the choice to leave his family and friends behind, or the choice to fight for Gabriel to not be released, or the choice to not subject to the community rules such as “do not lie”. Just like choice is subjective, individuality is as well. Without choice, people would not have different hair colors from their natural one, people would not have piercings, people would not have style; individuality would not have existed. This is one of the fundamental ideals that Henry David Thoreau fought wrote against: the idea of trends and following them. It places you in a group like everyone else and that sense of self is no longer there. The sense of individuality is placed with another person’s individuality. He focused on being in one’s own bubble, having that choice to be one’s own spectator and judge.
One of the many implementations the elders enforced in Jonas’ community was that everyone would take pills that would remove color from their sight. This included the removal of skin color and shades, making everyone the same and inherently “colorblind” to not only color, but race and everything that comes along with it. This concept of being colorblind to the world and race, along with the problems that racial inequality and tensions bring, is the basis of Susan G. Lea’s article “Seeing Beyond Sameness: Using The Giver to Challenge Colorblind Ideology”, in which she tackles the relationship of colorblind ideology to the sameness that The Giver implements in the characters throughout the novel. In Lea’s article she states that “Such colorblind stances promote the ideology exemplified by the community of The Giver, that is, emphasis on Sameness and avoidance of difference, particularly at an individual level, with no awareness of the institutional systems at work” (Lea 59). The people of the community have rules as to not show difference, acknowledge differences, and to not recognize someone else’s accomplishments in order to implement the sameness of the community, explained when Jonas said “It wasn’t a practical thing, so it became obsolete when we went to the Sameness” (Lowry 84). When they ask about what happens in the past or why things are the way they are, they are met with an ambiguous answer about how it helps make everyone better off than how it was before. This shows a strain on one’s individuality, coupled with the medications and genetic remodeling of their sight, the community leaders are stripping away at what makes them different from everyone else. Same with point of view of colorblind ideology, these people choose to not see race as something of importance and focus on how it somehow unites people. Although, Lea contradicts these stances with facts throughout her article, such as the findings “that higher levels of colorblind orientation were associated with higher levels of racial prejudice” (Lea 60). Jonas’ dystopian community loved to praise sameness and how it would make the world better and safer, although, with the analysis of Lea’s article, the community’s stance would make them worst off when it comes to their interactions with individuality. Take the example of one of members of the community being dropped in present-day society. They could still have the colorblind mentality or be able to see the different races and see individuality that each race possess, but with that mentality, racial issues would not mean a thing and they could be offensive to other people’s identity with race and their own issues. Individuality comes with having a race and or ethnicity. It separates and unites individuals and brings along an identity that resonates with themselves. The people in the dystopian community do not have such identity or relation that can bring them together. There is nothing personable because the leaders took that away from them in the view of being the same without anything in common. They are walking planks of wood with one purpose in life and no connection to anything. Lea’s brings along the analysis of how that is detrimental to be like that even if the point of it is, in what “Lowry…suggests that [is] the impulse toward safety and comfort are likely sources” (Lea 60). Lea’s article continuously brings up the Jim Crow/ Civil Rights Era and Segregation laws as examples. She writes that “colorblind attitude renders those of color invisible; it fails to see individuality but instead lumps people, particularly African-Americans… in an ‘undifferentiated blob’”, which relates to the previous scenario of one of the community members being dropped in today’s society (Lea 60). The use of race and colorblind ideology can be considered an internal conflict to Jonas’ community. It is a conflict to their individuality due to them not having a concise identify and being seen as the same “blob of nothingness” or sameness. Not only do they not have that sense of a racial identity, but they are not even aware of being more than just grey life forms in a community, taking away that sense of being a part of something and/or being different from others. The typical American society today not only focuses on individuality but how the different cultures come together to praise such individuality.
Like in the previous article about colorblind etiology and how it effects the community, Han Kyoung-Min and Lee Yonghwa focus on color, away from race, and how it represents the growth of individuality in the main character, Jonas. Though, the one of the first colors Jonas notices is red, Kyoung-Min and Yonghwa focus on white, or whiteness, as one of Jonas’ first indicators autonomy and self, “as Jonas both assumes and drops his role as the Receiver of Memory against the background of snow” (Kyoung-Min and Yonghwa 339). Though, the book starts by focusing on how red the sled was in that memory he first received, Jonas also witnessed snow, as white substance. The book also ends as Jonas travels with baby Gabriel through the snow, something he instantly recognizes along with the sled from his first memory. Philosophically, the authors noted how whiteness is seen throughout as a notion of absorbance. Seeing that white was the first, everything after came into place as he absorbed the rest of what The Receiver had to offer. This correlates to the fact that white is described as the absence of color, making it easier to formulate different color, or in this case memories, to then create more or new ones. They also focus on white as being a contrasting factor in the novel. “Jonas [was] better able to learn…red and appreciate its beauty because the whiteness of snow makes the redness of the sled visibly prominent to him as a color” (344). Contrast could be seen as an indicator of individuality, meaning to stand out and be a forefront. Just like the sled did when applied to a contrasting background such as snow, Jonas contrasted those after becoming Receiver in Training and after leaving the Community. His individuality grew because he was leaps and bounds more different than those who could not see a color that people today would think of as simple and bland. Jonas was the red sled against the see of white snow, the community members. They can be symbolized as white because they too can gain information and absorb what Jonas was taught, if they just have that chance of individuality.
Another problem that shows a trend of individuality being taken away from the community is their genetic amnesia. The community has no recollection of the past and the knowledge they had before. Carter Hanson’s article “The Utopian Function of Memory in Lois Lowry’s ‘The Giver” focuses on just that. Hanson recalls the story of The Giver and enhances it with information on how memory and knowledge affect others. He talks about the main way that people pass down memories and how it gets cut-off with the community leaders and “families” at the beginning of each generation. In the novel, birthmothers are the ones to give birth, and right after (without seeing the child they just birthed) they are given to the nurturers until it is time for the picked out couples to gain a baby. The parents’ basic function is to just raise the children on the given rules and instructions by the community leaders and nothing else. This includes not giving them previous knowledge on past history of the world simply because they were also raised as such and genetically altered to not know such memories. This is an external conflict to the community members. It is not their fault that their memories were taken away from them, it is the community leaders’ faults for instilling that sameness and amnesia throughout multiple generations. This is tied back into individuality because of what knowledge and memory can bring to a person. Someone can have totally opposite views and take history in different directions, ultimately making it subjective to them and how they perceive it. Take segregation, some people with that knowledge of a time period where people were ostracized for their color of their skin, they either have the option to reject it and form unity or accept it and preach hate. That is why their options when learning about history can be subjective in how they take it forward. Taking away that option is taking away someone’s freedom to choose, or someone’s freedom to relate, like the coming together of Jewish people after the Holocaust in mourning and pushing for peace.
Individuality could be seen in a multitude of ways, from color to memory and race. Transcendentalists, such as Thoreau and Emerson would have agreed that taking away that individuality from any mode would have been detrimental to them and the society as a whole. Why is this so important to ponder with this novel? This novel brings a glimpse of what full control could look like. It brings a glimpse of how micromanaging others’ emotions, memories, sense of self for the better could hurt them in the future. It shows them that they have nothing to live for but what they are told. In society today, this cannot be conceived in a grand scheme of things, or at least first world countries. Individuality is what drives others and without that people would just be programs.
Works Cited
- “Individuality” Merriam-Webster, 2019, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/individuality, Accessed 13 November 2019.
- Hanson, Carter F. “The Utopian Function of Memory in Lois Lowry’s ‘The Giver.’” Extrapolation (University of Texas at Brownsville), vol. 50, no. 1, Spring 2009, pp. 45–60. EBSCOhost, doi:10.3828/extr.2009.50.1.5.
- Kyoung-Min, Han, and Yonghwa Lee. 'The Philosophical and Ethical Significance of Color in Lois Lowry's the Giver.' The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 42, no. 3, 2018, pp. 338-358. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/2256176275?accountid=12365, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/uni.2018.0031.
- Lea, Susan G. “Seeing Beyond Sameness: Using ‘The Giver’ to Challenge Colorblind Ideology.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 37, no. 1, Mar. 2006, pp. 51–67. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10583-005-9454-2.
- Lowry, L. (1993). The Giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- Stewart, Susan Louise. “A Return to Normal: Lois Lowry’s The Giver.” Lion & the Unicorn, vol. 31, no. 1, Jan. 2007, p. 21. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=24390432&site=eds-live&scope=site.
- Tyler, Leona E. Individuality Human Possibilities and Personal Choice in the Psychological Development of Men and Women. Jossey-Bass, 1978.
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