Student Question
How did The Giver explain the visual phenomena Jonas witnessed in The Giver?
Quick answer:
Jonas has the Capacity to See Beyond, including the ability to see color, which no one else can see. When he first sees color, The Giver explains it to him. He also sees the faces of people change at a Ceremony. These are two of the very first ways that Jonas is able to tell that he is different from everyone else in his community.
Jonas has the Capacity to See Beyond, including the ability to see color, which no one else can see.
One of the first ways that Jonas knows that he is special is when he has a vision. At first, he has no idea what he is really seeing. He just notices that an apple suddenly changes in a way he cannot explain. The Giver later explains to him that he is seeing color. In fact, he is seeing the color “red” in the apple, skin tones, and Fiona’s hair.
Jonas’s community has embraced the concept of Sameness. This means that everyone looks the same, but also that there is no color. No one can see any colors. Imagine watching the world on an old black and white television set. Everything is shades of gray.
Jonas first sees the color red in the vision he has when the apple “changed” when...
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he was playing catch with Asher. It was a transformative experience for him.
But suddenly Jonas had noticed, following the path of the apple through the air with his eyes, that the piece of fruit had—well, this was the part that he couldn't adequately understand—the apple had changed. Just for an instant. (Ch. 3)
Jonas took the apple home—and got in trouble for it—but he was not able to find anything unusual about it. It was just an ordinary apple after that. It was only for that instant that the apple was different for him. He only saw its color briefly.
Red is a very distinctive color. It is probably why it stands out enough to be the first color Jonas saw. It is also the color of passion, and blood. It is a symbolic color. Jonas sees it again in the skin tones at the Ceremony of Twelve, which is a very meaningful place for him to acknowledge his difference and his Capacity to See Beyond.
But when he looked out across the crowd, the sea of faces, the thing happened again. The thing that had happened with the apple.
They changed. (Ch. 8)
Seeing the faces change is what helps Jonas assure the Elder that he is indeed the next Receiver of Memory. He tells her that it is all true. He does have the gifts she has been describing. The change in the faces produces a “sureness” in him.
When Jonas begins his training, The Giver tells him that he has been seeing red, and explains about Fiona’s hair. Eventually, once he begins receiving memories and learns what the world used to be like, he can see all of the colors, and the world begins to look to him the way it looks to us.
Research has told us that there is a clear connection between color and emotion. There are even therapies that use color treatments. Perhaps this is why Jonas’s world got rid of the colors. It definitely was a way of controlling people.
Jonas comments once about the lack of choice associated with a lack of color. It is a minor, but fundamental way that his community controls people. Controlling color also maintains an emotional equilibrium. People have to be calm, and have no emotions. This is Sameness. Jonas learns right away that he would rather feel both pain and love than neither.
How did The Giver explain Jonas's visual phenomena, and what did it reveal about the community?
The Giver tells Jonas that he is beginning to see the color red, and the community has eliminated color.
Jonas first notices color when he is throwing an apple to Asher and he sees it change. He can’t figure out what is happening, but something about the apple is different.
But suddenly Jonas had noticed, following the path of the apple through the air with his eyes, that the piece of fruit had--well, this was the part that he couldn't adequately understand--the apple had changed. Just for an instant. (Ch. 3)
Jonas does not find out what actually happened until later. He sees this change again at the Ceremony of Twelve, in the faces of the people in the audience, and then in Fiona’s hair. He tells The Giver and the old man explains to him what is happening. He is beginning to see the color red. When he gets more memories, he will see all of the colors.
The choice to eliminate color was one of the ways the community enforced Sameness. Sameness means that everyone looks alike and everyone dresses alike, but it also means that no one has any choices. When Jonas begins to see color, The Giver explains to Jonas that the community eliminated color in order to ensure that the community had total control.
"Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences." He thought for a moment. "We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others." (Ch. 12)
Eliminating colors seems like a small thing, until we realize how much individuality is expressed through color. It is why uniforms are used in our world. Color distinguishes us. If you eliminate it altogether, it is the most unifying factor possible. It eliminates choice. It eliminates difference. It makes distinction impossible. Eliminate color, and everything looks basically the same.