The Giver

For Jonas in The Giver, the extreme control that the leaders of his community have taken begins to feel stifling when he starts to receive the memories of life before the "sameness" was created. The leaders of the community, in an effort to protect their people from the negative and harmful aspects of life, created a completely controlled and non-varying society. Though Jonas sees both the positive things about the old way of life such as color, music and love and the negative things like pain and war (that were the aspects of life that caused the leaders to make their community the way it was) Jonas decides that the good outweighs the bad and his way of life needs to change.

For that reason he leaves the community and allows all of his memories of the old world out into his community so that everyone is forced to deal with them instead of being shielded from them. Jonas escapes his controlling world and finds his way finally, by way of sled, to a world that resembles our modern society. In a very bildungsroman fashion, Jonas breaks out of his shell of protection and chooses to become an individual. The dystopian society in which Jonas dwelt shows this concept on a grander scale because it shows an entire community that is shielded or protected or controlled that has the potential to become independent. The young adult literature genre is a perfect place for this type of story because adolescents are very concerned with the gaining of independence. This type of story allows them to experience this while also making a safe commentary about modern society’s possible path.