The Giver: Utopia Or Dystopia? Video
The Idea of Utopia (and Dystopia) Explained The Giver: Utopia Or Dystopia?.With the enormous success of read more Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games films, Hollywood has been busy adapting books written for the young adult audience. The most recent example is the movie version of Dystopoa? Giver, which was produced by Jeff Bridges and which The Giver: Utopia Or Dystopia? Bridges and Meryl Streep. Having never even heard of the novel, I came at the film with no expectations, and I confess I was quite surprised both by the power of its societal critique and by its implicit Christian themes. The story is set in the near future, in a seemingly utopian city, where there is no conflict, no inequality, and no stress.
The Giver By Lois Lowry
The streets are laid out in a perfectly symmetrical grid, the domiciles and public buildings are clean, even antiseptic, and the people dress in matching outfits and ride bicycles so as not to pollute the environment. In order to eliminate any volatile emotions that might stir up resentment or compromise the perfect equilibrium of the society, each citizen is obligated to take a daily injection of a kind of sedative.
No one, that is, except the Giver, an The Giver: Utopia Or Dystopia? who retains memories Giver:: the previous world for the sole purpose of consulting them in case an emergency arises and specialized knowledge is called for. Utopian societies, maintained through totalitarian control, have been dreamed about at least since hTe time of Plato, and, to be sure, many attempts have been made over the centuries to realize the dream.
We find the fierce enforcement of politically correct speech, the manic attempt to control the environment, coldly modernist architecture, the prizing of equality as the supreme value, the rampant use of drugs, the denial of death, and the wanton exercise of both euthanasia and abortion. Will all of this produce a balanced and peaceful society? Well, it might bring about a kind of equilibrium, but at a terrible cost. The plot of The Giver centers on a young man named Jonas who was chosen by the elders to become the sole recipient of the suppressed memory of the previous world.
Through a sort of telepathy, the Giver communicates to Jonas all of the richness, color, drama, and joy of the pre-Utopian society. The most beguiling image he receives is of himself sledding down a snowy hill and coming upon a cottage from which he hears emerging the strains of a song he had never heard before in fact, both snow and music had been excluded from his world. In time, the Giver fills out the picture, communicating to the young man the pain and conflict of the previous world as well.
The Giver A Utopia Or A Dystopia?
Though at first he is horrified by that experience, Jonas realizes that the colorful world, even with its suffering, would be preferable to the bloodless and inhuman dystopia in which he had been raised. As the story moves to its climax, Jonas escapes from the city and ventures out into the forbidden wilderness.
The weather turns fiercely cold and he wanders through the snow until he comes to a clearing where he spies the sled that he had previously seen in memory. The Giver: Utopia Or Dystopia? the prompts of the recollection, he rides the sled down a snowy hill, comes to the quaint cottage, and listens to the song. What the story suggests, quite rightly, is that suppression of the good news of the Incarnation is in fact what conduces to dysfunctional and dangerous totalitarianism.
The source of the greatest suffering throughout human history is the attempt to deal with original sin on our own, through our political, economic, military, or cultural efforts. When we try to eliminate conflict and sin through social reform, we inevitably make matters worse.]
It is excellent idea. It is ready to support you.
You have quickly thought up such matchless phrase?
Absolutely with you it agree. I think, what is it excellent idea.