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Using Literature to Express Idea

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Literature is an excellent way to express messages and ideas. In the media, we never hear the full story of something. When you read an article in a newspaper about a war, for example, you read only the main points of the event: dates, number of casualties, a few people who played major parts in the event, and a scattered bit of information to give you a general idea of what happened.

Newspapers are effective for giving us important information, but books give us the ENTIRE story of what occured in the event, and every bit of information on it. Books are more in-depth on subjects than any other kind of literature, and are extremely detailed, giving us the ability to feel like we are experiencing the described event, or events, ourselves. This is why I think books are the best for learning about anything, and they are also excellent for expressing political or social ideas, which is exactly what Lois Lowry, the author of The Giver, has done.
Lois Lowry used the power of books to express a social message, that the world can never be perfect. That a Utopia is unachieveable, a place that we can only imagine. Lowry tells us this message through her story, and bases the Community on the world right now.
There are many reasons that the Community is the complete opposite of a Utopia, an example would be the fact that citizens have absolutely no control over their lives. The moment they are born (hopefully they didn't have a twin that was heavier than them or their life would end right after being lifted off the scale), they are ASSIGNED, by leaders of the Community, to a family unit and then later on in their life they are assigned a job, a spouse, and a maximum of two kids. Besides the Giver and Reciever of knowledge, nobody knows about memories of the past, such as fun things like Christmas and music, and bad things as well, like war and murder. They aren't allowed to leave the Community whenever they want. If anybody made a big mistake or disobeyed a major rule they would be killed by lethal injection immediately. It is shocking that nobody ever objected to way of life there, before Jonas did, but residents of the Community were practically under a spell of some kind because they didn't have any consciousness of how wrong it was. They were so used to living that type of lifestyle, that it was considered perfectly normal. But the Community is nowhere near normal.
The Community reminds me of the world at present times, well, not the ENTIRE world, but one country in particular. North Korea. The way that North Koreans live their lives is truly horrifying, and so much like how people live in the Community. North Koreans live under very strict rules and regulations, just like all characters in the Giver. North Koreans will also recieve terrible punishments for breaking these rules, usually they get shot. There was a story about a North Korean girl who was caught listening to South Korean radio broadcasts, and she was immediately killed. Like residents of the Community, North Koreans are not allowed to leave the country at all, and they also do not have knowledge of what life outside of N.K. is like.
Lois Lowry expressed her thoughts on current issues in the world through The Giver, and she has used literature to send a message to all readers about how there is no such thing as a Utopia, it is merely a figment of our imagination.

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