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Cristobal Ayala
Ms. Murray
English-6th
21 Oct. 2013
Jonas Character Change
Change is always hard, because it can be a long and difficult process. In the book,
The Giver (1993) Lois Lowry makes her main character, Jonas, change a great deal.
Lowry does not mind giving Jonas a hard time, because Jonas starts as a simple
community member who is compliant and obedient, and grows into a boy who will risk
everything he has to save a person he loves. Lowry makes Jonas change in many ways,
but one of the most important ways is how he changed as a friend, a son, and as a student,
each change bringing suffering.
One of the most important ways that Jonas changes is as a friend. At the
beginning, Jonas is a caring and kind friend. Jonas is best friends with Asher, and Jonas is
very kind with him. He always plays around with him. As Jonas starts receiving
memories of pain, color, true happiness, and love, he wants to share these memories with
his friends and family. Jonas is unable to do so, “he was often angry, now: irrationally
angry at his classmates, that they were satisfied with their lives which had none of the
vibrance of his own” (99). Another moment that demonstrates this shift is when Jonas´
friends are playing a game in the park. When Jonas´ realizes the game is a game of war; it
horrifies him. He begs his friends to stop playing the game, but as his friends have never
before seen warfare, they cannot relate to him (134). This alienates him from his friends.
Another thing that changed Jonas as a friend is he can no longer really talk to his friends,
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because they have had none of the true emotions that Jonas now has. Jonas suffers
through all of these changes a lot.
Another way that Jonas changes through The Giver is as a son. Jonas slowly
separates himself from his family. The separation begins with keeping a few things to
himself and builds to blatantly lying to his family-something he had never done before.
Jonas initially shares everything with his family, including his emotions. For example,
when Jonas talks about his Stirrings. Stirrings are lustful dreams about a girl, but he still
tells everything to his family, even though they embarrassed him (36). His relationship
starts to change when Jonas is selected to be the Receiver and he is told he may lie. He
starts questioning if his parents had also been told that they may lie, and if they have
always been entirely truthful to him (71). One pivotal moment is when Jonas receives his
first memory of love. He asks his parents if they love him. His parents laugh and tell him
that he should be precise with his language, and that they certainly “appreciated” him:
“´Do you understand why it is inappropriate to use a word like love?´... Jonas nodded.
“´Yes, thank you, I do´”… It was his first lie to his parents” (127). This was the moment
that Jonas notices how different he is from his parents. They cannot truly feel emotions
like him, and that makes him different. Jonas permanently separates himself from his
family when he finds out that his father kills a baby when he has to be “released” (151).
Jonas is appalled and dismayed that his father can do such a thing, and he loses all of the
trust that he has in his father. Jonas slowly becomes more distant with his family. He can
no longer share his true emotions with them and he does not trust them at the end.
The last way that Jonas changes, but maybe the most important, is when he
becomes the Receiver. At first, when Jonas is selected to be the Receiver, he is scared,
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but also curious and a bit eager. When Jonas receives his first memory, he is fascinated
with all of the things that were new to him. He is even more excited with what is to come,
even though he knows there will be pain involved. Something changes in Jonas when he
receives his first memory of pain, the sledding accident where he breaks his leg. Jonas is
no longer innocent to the world. He is now definitely different from everybody in his
community, because he is the only one who truly knows pain. The only person who can
understand him is the Giver, and that is one of the reasons why Jonas grows to love him,
and the Giver loves him in return. Jonas changed as the Receiver because he truly loves
for the first time. A critical moment in The Giver is when Jonas learns about the truth of
release, and he snaps: “I won’t! I wont go home! You can’t make me!” (152). This is
when Jonas thinks that his life is not worth living if he stays in his community, so he and
the Giver plan his escape. This is the biggest change that Jonas has, because he now
knows that he has to leave.
Jonas truly experiences real emotions for the first time in his life like love, pain,
anger, sadness and happiness. These emotions force him to change. You cannot be the
same afterwards if you live in a life without any color or emotion. Lowry is trying to
show us that even in a life with pain and sadness, it is still worth living. She thinks how
many people today hide their true selves just to fit in with the crowd so they do not suffer
more. Life, even through all its pain and misery, is still worth living. Everybody has the
right to live a full life.
Works Cited:
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. New York: Bantam
Books, 1993. Print.