Student Essay on The Sheltered Life of "The Giver"

The Sheltered Life of "The Giver" by Lois Lowry

Essay

In Jonas's community, the people choose to be protected from making wrong choices so that both they and the rest of the community will feel safe. Although this may sound appealing, this is certainly no way for an intellectual human being to live. There are many pros and cons of this philosophy for living.

There are many cons to this philosophy of living. The people of this community are probably very bored with their lives. Everything is always the same. Even making a bad choice would be better than making no choice at all. These people would benefit from making a wrong choice by experiencing the result. Also, if they are prevented from making bad choices, then they are not learning anything new, and their lives are always the same. By being protected from making wrong choices, in order to feel safe, the people of this community are beginning to be robotic.

There are also some pros of being protected from making bad choices. One would be, the obvious, you would never have to worry about making a bad choice because you are prevented from doing so. Because there are no bad choices being made, the people of Jonas's community feel very safe and secure where they live. They do not have to think about crime or murder. They are so protected that they probably don't even know what these words mean.

Even though the idea of waking up and knowing that you will not make any bad choices and that nothing bad will happen to you sounds good, this is not the way we should live. We should all live life to the fullest. We should experience not only the good things, but also the bad things and consequences in life. We should be allowed to make choices; our own choices.