ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Rules and Order Videos 12 videos
Have you ever pretended to be super happy for your BFF when they win an award when, really, you just wanted to rip it out of their undeserving, ung...
How do you insult the Soviet Union and get away with it? Make them animals. (No one will ever know.) That was George Orwell's plan, and it worked....
Would would the world be like without books? Ray Bradbury tackles that question—and many more— in Fahrenheit 451. Go ahead; read it on your Kin...
The Giver 46275 Views
Share It!
Description:
In The Giver , society is completely conformist. Neutrality rules the day, and no emotion is good emotion. Lois Lowry's novel challenges the value of conformity and points out the highs and lows of life—as well as how highs and lows are life. Mind. Blown.
Transcript
- 00:04
The Giver, a la Shmoop. In Lois Lowry’s “The Giver,” people
- 00:12
live in ‘sameness’ so they don’t have to feel pain.
- 00:17
Twelve-year-old Jonas finds out he’s to receive the memories of his Community in order
- 00:21
to learn from their past. Having access to these memories allows Jonas
- 00:26
to feel love for the first time. Great for Jonas… but what about us? Are
Full Transcript
- 00:31
we hiding our feelings? Are we avoiding pain? Is expressing our emotions becoming less important…
- 00:38
… than keeping our sanity? How often do we just go for a stroll to think
- 00:45
deeply about our lives? But then most of us don’t care to be alone
- 00:51
– we’d rather be hanging out with our friends…
- 00:53
…doing the same things they’re doing…
- 00:55
…buying the same clothes… watching the same shows…listening to the same music…
- 00:59
…avoiding the tough questions and the hard realities of the world we live in.
- 01:03
In “The Giver,” the Community avoids emotions so they can avoid pain and grief.
- 01:09
Let’s talk about our community’s emotions for a sec.
- 01:12
You know - that tingling sensation you get in the pit of your stomach on a first kiss.
- 01:17
Although it might actually be butterflies living in your stomach. Better get yourself
- 01:21
checked out. Life certainly has its ups and downs…the
- 01:25
kind the Collective tried to avoid feeling. In our world, some might argue that feeling
- 01:30
these ups and downs can be too extreme. The Community in “The Giver” gave up their
- 01:35
ability to remember their pain. Is the same happening to us in the real world?
- 01:41
Are we willingly creating our own kind of community ‘sameness’?
- 01:45
Are we relying too heavily on meds? Are we asking to be prescribed out of experiencing…
- 01:50
…the peaks… …and valleys…
- 01:53
…of life’s journey ahead? Will we soon be like the Collective?
- 01:59
Willing to forget our past to make the present less painful?
- 02:03
Or will we ‘remember,’ like Jonas, and allow ourselves to live through the challenges,
- 02:07
glories and disappointments that life brings our way?
- 02:10
Shmoop Amongst Yourselves.
Related Videos
This video defines utopias and dystopias, and investigates how a utopia might become a dystopia. Can a seemingly perfect world actually be a dystop...
We may all be fools when it comes to love, but thankfully none of us will accidentally switch places with our twin brother and fall in love with ou...
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.