Wednesday, December 2, 2009
The Giver
If after our class discussion on eugenics you want to read some novel related to the topic, a good choice is The Giver by Lois Lowry (if you haven’t read it yet). I read the book a year ago, and although my recollection may not be accurate, the book basically depicts a perfect community in which the technology has advanced to the degree that gene sequences in zygotes are modified so that people can’t perceive each other’s differences in traits any more. The community people live in is perfectly harmonious, without crimes, discriminations, or wars. A committee made of the wise controls everything in the society one can think of: family make-up, occupation, daily activities, information people receive, etc. Once the kids in this community reach a certain age they get assigned to occupations that they will do their whole life. The story is centered around how Jonas, the protagonist, gets this job that involves him experiencing all the painful, disastrous, and miserable memories in human history. The Giver is only assigned to one person in the society so Jonas bears all the heaviness from the past. From Jonas’s decision in the end, Ms. Lowry reveals what she thinks would happen if scientific experimentation on human beings goes unregulated, or develops with too much emphasis on science.
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3 comments:
I'm not sure that this is Lowry commentary on eugenics, but I do think it brings up an excellent point that can be applied to eugenics. What exactly is the end goal of improving human beings? Is there an end result that we are attempting to produce? This is inherently wrong. The idea that society is striving for a blue print of a human being is wrong. In The Giver it is as if they have come up with the formula for a 'utopianistic' society and the result is that they came up with a society that is void of the malice of society but also void of the joys. It moves towards homogeneity instead of heterogeneity and all the joys of differences in a society are lost. This is the danger of eugenics, you cannot make it so that you are striving for an end result, there can't be a blueprint for what type of person you want to make, otherwise you are just moving towards a society that is too similar. You have to weigh the benefits of having a safer society with the freedoms associated with individuality and making choices.
The first time I read The Giver I was in third grade and I was left in tears. I remember vividly placing the book in the back of my bookshelf so that I wouldn’t have to see it. I read it two more times for school classes in later years, and while I was better able to understand the concepts as I got older, I never forgot my initial reaction to the book. I was shocked by the depiction of this community that “releases” members by killing them through lethal injection. Also, the desire to make a perfect community was extremely apparent even back then. This fictional community provides a warning for today’s society that is bent on remaking humans and a world without suffering. This idea is idealistic though and with the loss of suffering comes the inability to fully appreciate joy. If an individual never goes through rough times in their lives, the joyful periods won’t be as poignant to them. The question becomes, by striving for perfection do we lose sight of what truly matters in our lives such as family, friends, and fun? The depicted community in The Giver most certainly lost sight of these aspects of life, and serves as a good reminder of what could potentially result from human experimentation.
While I have never read The Giver, I have heard that it is much like Brave New World in that it demonstrates the brute potential of science. Both novels depict a futuristic world in which babies are genetically engineered and selected by an authority figure to play a certain role in the community. In Aldous Huxley’s novel, each character is, even before birth, placed into a certain class. The United States has always be a safe haven for immigrants and people of different cultures to come together in search of the “American Dream”. This concept contains with it the idea that with hard work social mobility is a possibility. The “level” playing field component has been a huge part of American culture. Equality and free will have constantly been at the forefront of our national perception and identity. A change like these two authors have suggested would be catastrophic for beyond personal reasons. A country that has claimed itself to be a beacon of acceptance would be turned upside down. Our belief system would be completely inverted.
However, while these situations are terrifying, we must remember why we invest time and money into technology in the first place. Generally advancements in this realm make everyday life easier. These books highlight key concerns for the advancement of science, but in no way foreshadow our definite future. The entire science fiction genre needs to be taken with a grain of salt. We must recognize the strength of technology in order to proceed cautiously into the future.
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