Student Question
Who are the antagonists in Lowry's The Giver?
Quick answer:
The main antagonist in Lois Lowry's The Giver is the concept of "Sameness," a societal system that suppresses individuality, emotions, and choice to maintain order and avoid conflict. This system is not personified by any specific character, as the elders enforcing it are also products of its influence and lack the memories to understand its full impact. Jonas's struggle is primarily against this oppressive system and its limitations on human experience.
The antagonist of any story is the main person or obstacle that stands in the protagonist's way of achieving his/her goal. There isn't one person who gets in Jonas's face and battles with him about not leaving the community, for example. The major conflict is Jonas vs Sameness; therefore, it is Sameness, the system under which everyone lives, that Jonas must conquer. Sameness was started "back and back and back" as the Giver says, by ancestors who don't exist for Jonas anymore (95).
Some might argue that the elders are the antagonists because they are the ones who enforce Sameness and they know better. But the Giver says that they really don't know what they are doing: first, because they are products of the system of Sameness themselves; and second, they don't have the memories to help them make such a critical decision for the community. All the...
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elders know is that the Receiver holds all of the pain and suffering for the community so they all can lead "happier" lives. If they did know the full extent at which Sameness inhibits people from leading more abundant lives, they may have sided with the Giver that Sameness should end. But there's no specific elder or elders who are the villains of the story.
Hence, there isn't anyone to point a finger at to blame or hold accountable for setting up a system of government that takes away people's ability to make choices of preference, euthanizes babies and the elderly, or forces people to take pills to oppress their sensual desires. The system just exists and Jonas must discover what it is exactly in order to know how to break it down. If he succeeds, people would be able to take back their free agency and the ability and freedom to make their own choices.Â
Who or what is the antagonist in The Giver?
HI!
You can safely argue that the antagonist of the Giver is basically the concept of "Sameness", that is, that collective feeling of limbo that the dystopian (at first seemingly Utopian) society presented in the story chose to adopt in order to not suffer emotional conflicts.
When Jonah became the new Receiver, he discovered all the things to be learned from what society was like before Sameness took place He realized that there is a lot to be learned from conflict and complexity, and that there is a place for pain in one's life. Therefore, Sameness and all that it represents, is the main antagonist which directly contradicts the role of Jonah in the story.