In Lowry's The Giver, death is referred to as "release" because the leaders of the community, the Elders, do not want the people of the community to realize that their members are being killed. People believe that those released are going "Elsewhere," that is, somewhere outside of the community. In fact, people are euthanized when they get old enough to be more trouble than they are worth, people are put to death for infractions of the rules, and in at least one instance, a child is put to death for its failure to thrive. Everyone in this community must be productive, healthy, and compliant. Otherwise, it's a death sentence. "Release" is something beyond a mere euphemism in the novel. It's a lie. If people knew the truth, they might resist in some way, assuming that the drugs they take to suppress their emotions would allow that to happen. But the combination of the lie and the drugs keeps the denizens of the community compliant and content, with no outrage over the killing of their old, their unfit, and their rule-breakers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment