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The Individual vs. Society
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Giver, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
In Jonas's community, no one makes choices. All choices about the community were made in the distant past when Sameness was created, and any additional changes involve painfully slow bureaucratic procedures. Without choice, no one suffers the consequences that come from making wrong choices, but they also don't experience the joys that come with making right ones. By sacrificing the freedom of choice, community members are guaranteed a stable, painless life. Consequently, the people lead pleasant—but robotic—lives.
When Jonas discovers memory, he realizes that choice is essential to human happiness. Choice, he learns, is power. He makes the first real choice in his life when he decides to escape from the community and take Gabriel with him. In making this significant and dangerous choice, he gives a windfall of pleasure and pain to the people he leaves behind, and gives the freedom of choice back to the community.
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Freedom and Choice ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Freedom and Choice appears in each chapter of The Giver. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Freedom and Choice Quotes in The Giver
Below you will find the important quotes in The Giver related to the theme of Freedom and Choice.
Chapter 2
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After Twelve, age isn't important. Most of us even lose track of how old we are as time passes.
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Chapter 4
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He just bowed to all of us and then walked, like they all do, through the special door in the Releasing Room. But you should have seen his look. Pure happiness, I'd call it.
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Chapter 6
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If you don't fit in, you can apply for Elsewhere and be released. My mother says that once, about ten years ago, someone applied and was gone the next day.
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Chapter 11
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I have a great honor. So will you. But you will find that that is not the same as power.
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Chapter 12
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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 difference. We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others. >
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Chapter 13
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They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.
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Sometimes I wish they'd ask for my wisdom more often-there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don't want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable-so painless. It's what they've chosen.
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He wondered what lay in the far distance where he had never gone. The land didn't end beyond those nearby community. Were there hills Elsewhere? Were there vast wind-torn areas like the place he had seen in memory, the place where the elephants died?
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Chapter 17
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He saw the familiar wide river beside the path differently. He saw all of the light and color and history it contained and carried in its slow-moving water; and he knew that there was an Elsewhere from which it came, and an Elsewhere to which it was going.
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Chapter 19
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He killed it! My father killed it! Jonas said to himself.
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Chapter 20
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"Having you here with me over the past year has made me realize that things must change. For years I've felt that they should, but it seemed so hopeless. Now for the first time I think there might be a way," The Giver said slowly.
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Chapter 22
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If he had stayed in the community, he would not be. It was as simple as that. Once he had yearned for choice. Then, when he has had a choice, he had made the wrong one: the choice to leave. And now he was starving.
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He wept because he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself.
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Chapter 23
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For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.
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