In humanities, I am reading The Giver by Lois Lowry. In the novel, everything is chosen for the community. Nobody has to make any decisions except for the elders.
Why does The Giver say that making choices would be frightening for people?
In the novel, The Giver told Jonas that making choices will be frightening for people. When he said this, I think that he was referring to important decisions that can impact your whole life. The Giver said this for several reasons. The first reason is because the people had never had to make a important decision for themselves before. Not even their in choosing their jobs. In the novel, nobody gets to chose their jobs because the elders choose it for them. The community doesn't even get to chose simple things like their comfort animal or if they want to cut their hair or not. It will be frightening to them to wake up one morning and suddenly have to be independent in everything that they do. The people have never been independent and they are uncomfortable with making choices.
Another reason is because I think that the people in Jonas' community is scared to make big mistakes. They know that it can result in release and they don't want that, so all their lives they have been careful and listened to their parents, teachers, and the elders. In the beginning of the book, a pilot misread the directions of where to fly to, causing a lot of confusion, and in result, he had been released. If the people had to make decisions, they will make mistakes at some point in their lives. There was no doubt in that and because the people are afraid, they never tried making decisions for themselves.
The last reason why The Giver said that it would be frightening to the people to make decisions is because they don't want to be different from other people. In the community, because the people don't have to choose anything, everyone is similar in what they look like and what they do. In the novel, it says that before tuning ten, all the little girls have to wear hair ribbons. Also, depending on how old you are, you get specific types of clothes. They had strict rules about when you eat and when you start your volunteer hours. People in the community are always similar in how they look and what they do to others their age. If they had to made choices, everyone would choose different things which will make them unique and special. I think that the people might be afraid of being different.
Graphic Citations:
http://www.startbeingyourbest.com/2009/04/life-design-wrapup/
I agree with you, I think that your last reason was really good. When we read through out the book we notice that the people are always trying to be alike. Like in page 95 we can see that people preferred to look similar so the could prevent arguments because of differences. I also agree in the reason that the community was scared of them making all the wrong decisions. I specially think that reason because when we are reading we see that the community was really save and everything is perfect. When I was reading I was thinking about why they didn’t let them choice their wife or husband. I agree with your other reasons but I specially agree with this ones.
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