Literary+Criticism+Essay

//**Context:** The other major assignment in Literary Theory was to write a 5-7 page essay applying a critical approach of our choice to the text of our choice. For this essay, I chose to continue my study of The Giver by Lois Lowry but apply a Marxist reading to the novel. //

**Jonas’s Freedom: A Marxist Reading of The Giver by Lois Lowry ** Adolescents always feel that their own form of the bourgeoisie is oppressing them – mainly the adults in their lives. Being an adolescent means being in a struggle to figure out who you are and where you belong in society. Karl Marx believed that when a society is examined, “we discover that its structure is built upon a series of ongoing conflicts within social classes” (Bressler 202). In examining the community in Lois Lowry’s Newberry Medal Award novel The Giver, one will find Marxism hard at work in Jonas and his community. The Committee of Elders, the bourgeoisie, is also the base and the superstructure. The Committee of Elders decides all “economic means of production within a society” and it also “engenders and controls all human institutions and ideologies” (Bressler 193). This creates an interesting interpretation of what the proletariat’s role in the society is. However, Jonas and the Giver show us that the proletariat can have an impact on the bourgeoisie, and in turn the base and the superstructure. Through the realizations that he and the Giver can control the bourgeoisie, base, and superstructure, Jonas is able to free himself from the false consciousness and hegemony of the Committee of Elders.
 * Introduction **

Jonas’s community is “meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made” (Lowry 48). Life in the community is “so orderly, so predictable – so painless” (Lowry 103). The bourgeoisie’s hegemony is the definition of reality for the members of the community, which also shapes their consciousness. The hegemony of the Committee of Elders is extremely complex which creates a challenge in deciding which parts are important for this reading of the text. I believe it is important to discuss three parts of dominant hegemony in order to adequately describe the false consciousness that Jonas discovers and rebels against with the Giver later in the novel.
 * The Committee’s Hegemony **

“Sameness” has the connotation that it expresses – everything, everyone is the same. “Sameness” is the ideology that shapes the values and meaning that the members of the community subscribe to without being conscious of it. There are “two children – one male, one female – to each family unit. It was written very clearly in the rules” (Lowry 8). “Sameness” also affects the community member’s inability to have emotions (most specifically “Stirrings”) and feelings. Community members who started to have “Stirrings” were required to take a pill “’all of your adult life’” (38). “Sameness” also extends into color – no one in the community can see color except Jonas and the Giver. There is no starvation, no disease, no war, no conflict, no memories, no individuality. The idea and practice of “Sameness” allows the bourgeoisie to consciously control the members of the community who are unconscious of this part of their lives.

A second part of the dominant hegemony is the importance of language. The Committee of Elders enforces the “precision of language” through the rules that it forces upon the proletariat. The community has been told that “the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered” (Lowry 70) while he recalls that one of his first lessons in language was “never to lie” (Lowry 70). The bourgeoisie has also made language obsolete through its dictation of “precision of language.” Words such as animal and love have no real meaning because of the next part of the hegemony at work in Jonas’s society.

The Giver is the keeper of all memories – “’the memories of the whole world…before you, before me, before the previous Receiver, and generations before him’” (Lowry 77) – this allows the bourgeoisie to control the memories, or the lack thereof, of the proletariat. Jonas becomes the Receiver of these memories, which baffles him because he does not understand that there is a world of otherness, difference and beyond what he knows (Lowry 77). Without the memories of the past, the proletariat is free to believe anything and everything the bourgeoisie tells them without realizing they are inherently being brainwashed.

“’Jonas has been selected to be our next Receiver of Memory’” (Lowry 60). From this small, seemingly insignificant expression of language, Jonas starts his discovery that he has been victim of false consciousness – everything that he has thought of as the truth, the right, the important is no longer so. Jonas’s life changes exponentially when he officially becomes the Receiver. He receives rules that are specific to him – something that he has never experienced because of his oppression by the bourgeoisie. Jonas is “exempted from rules governing rudeness…prohibited from dream-telling…not permitted to apply for release...(Lowry 68). But the rule that seems to stun Jonas the most was that he is able to lie (Lowry 68). Jonas’s entire being and identity has been based on the Committee of Elder’s hegemony – he has had no individuality or never known what it was like to function as an individual – he only knows how to be interdependent on others and the Committee of Elders. These new rules broke every part of the value and meaning that he had thought of as truth. This “realization made him feel desperately lonely” (Lowry 110); he is an outcast from his society. Jonas becomes terrified with the idea that “he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true” (Lowry 71). However, it is through his selection to become the Receiver that Jonas sees the truth behind the hegemony that has been forced upon him for his entire life. Two experiences of being the Receiver and interacting with the Giver make Jonas realize that “’they [the community] can’t help it. They know nothing.’” (Lowry 53) and he must break away and rise against the oppression and hegemony of the Community of Elders.
 * Jonas’s Realization **

Jonas receives the feeling of love and he wishes that his community were still able to feel love (Lowry 126). However, Jonas cannot shake the ideals and values that the bourgeoisie have forced upon him. “He could feel that there was risk involved, though he wasn’t sure how” (Lowry 126). Jonas then brings up love at home and was told that he “’used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete’” (Lowry 127). This shakes Jonas, and he lies to his parents about understanding that using the word love is inappropriate. Through this interaction with his memories, his newfound mini-escape from the hegemony of the bourgeoisie, something begins to stir in him and he throws away the pill he takes every morning to stop his Stirrings. This is Jonas’s first, although very minor, delinquent act in the face of the dominant ideology.
 * Rising Against Oppression **

Jonas’s second experience shucking off the bourgeoisie’s hegemony comes with knowledge that the Ceremony of Release also fell under the false consciousness that Jonas has been subjected to and forced into. Jonas, along with the rest of the community, was under the assumption that a release was a celebration and a positive thing. However, on a day that Jonas’s father is supposed to release a newborn twin because it would be confusing to have identical people in the same community (Lowry 146), Jonas is able to watch the tape of the release and Jonas is thrust into the stark realization that his father had actually killed the twin and tossed it into “the same sort of chute into which trash was deposited at school” (Lowry 150). After Jonas is through watching the tape, he “felt a ripping sensation inside himself, the feeling of terrible pain crawling its way forward to emerge in a cry” (Lowry 151). This ripping sensation metaphorically speaks for Jonas’s desire to rip away and protest against the bourgeoisie and to stand up for what he has learned is right. The Giver reiterates that the Committee of Elders has been consciously forcing its hegemony on the members of the community by telling Jonas that “’it’s what he [Jonas’s father] was told to do, and he knows nothing else’” (Lowry 153).

It is after the incident involving the twin’s release that Jonas truly begins to realize that he and the Giver are truly alone in knowing the truth – not the truth that the Committee of Elders has been imparting on the community. The Giver tells Jonas that “’having you here with me over the past year has made me realize that things must change. For years I’ve felt that they should, but it seemed so hopeless” (Lowry 154-155). It is from here that the Giver and Jonas create the plan to “release” Jonas into Elsewhere which will then send all of the memories that Jonas received from the Giver back into the community. This act represents Jonas and the Giver’s realization that there has to be someone to start the change – to rebel and break free – from the paralyzing and asserting hegemony of the Committee of Elders. By bringing Gabe with himself into Elsewhere, Jonas and the Giver are able to impact the base and superstructure created by the Committee of Elders. By releasing memories, which contain pain and knowledge (Lowry 104), the Committee of Elders can no longer dictate every aspect of life within the community, and even if it is only for a short while before the memories dissipate back into nothingness, the community can be aware of the hegemony being forced upon them. Jonas and Gabriel, on the other hand, will fully be able to break away from the debilitating base, superstructure and bourgeoisie of the community and know that “Elsewhere held their future and their past” (Lowry 178).
 * Breaking Free **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Even though Jonas and the Giver both had special qualities that aided them in their ability to rise against the bourgeoisie, base and superstructure of their society, The Giver can show adolescents that change can happen and that perhaps we all should not blindly follow the values and ideals that have been consciously or unconsciously pushed upon us by the bourgeoisie. Through Jonas’s movement from ignorance to realization to action, a Marxist lens can show that even a person extremely steeped in the dominant hegemony can break free and embark on a new life free from the oppression of the bourgeoisie.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Conclusion **

<span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: center;">Bibliography <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Print.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Lowry, Lois. The Giver. New York, NY: Laurel Leaf, 2002. Print.