The Giver Themes

Jonas is a very dynamic character, because he has changed a lot from the beginning of the book to the ending, in the beginning Jonas was a bit selfish. Jonas shows signs of selfishness. Jonas shows signs of being selfish because when the ceremony was coming up an example of this is, ““I'm feeling apprehensive,” he confessed…it's the ceremony that I'm worried about. It's ceremony that I’m apprehensive about”. This shows that Jonas showed signs of selfishness, because the ceremony was the only thing he had cared about and the only thing he could think about. Also to top it all off Jonas wouldn't even think of what assignment his friends would get. Even though in the beginning Jonas was selfish, he would eventually have a change of heart, he would then become selfless. Jonas showed signs of selflessness when, he no longer cared about himself this is shown when, “...he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself”. This shows great selflessness because he did not care about himself anymore at that point. All he cared about at that point at time was if Gabriel would survive or not. So Jonas has changed a lot from the beginning to the ending of The Giver.

Jonas had went through many hardships, and that had made him a selfless person. While Gabriel and Jonas had escaped the community, Jonas showed signs of selflessness because, “ He wept because he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself”. This shows how he shows selflessness because he is literally crying because he feels that he can no longer keep Gabriel alive. Jonas has also been giving him memories to be able to keep Gabriel, the memories that Jonas would give Gabriel would be things like warmth. So he doesn’t even care if he freezes to death, all Jonas care about is keeping Gabe alive. However this is not the only change of attitude that Jonas has had, at a time Jonas has had the feeling of loneliness. For a while when a The Giver had first started giving Jonas the painful memories, there was a time were Jonas had felt lonely because no one had to go through the same things he had to. While in his Jonas thought to himself, “They have never known pain, he thought. The realization made him feel desperately lonely…” . This shows that he had felt lonely for a time because he felt that he could not go see no one else for help for all of those memories. He would feel like this because since almost no one else had those memories so no one else would be able to help him deal with all of the pain, and The Giver didn't do a good trying to help Jonas deal with all of the pain.