What are the advantages of release in The Giver?

The word "release" in this book is a euphemism. It takes the place of a word that sounds harsh. That's an advantage in a community that is trying to stabilize all emotions. If this question is asking about advantages to actually euthanizing people, then I believe that readers could find certain advantages to that practice. One advantage is that it functions as a population control measure. Jonas's society schedules births, so it makes sense that they also schedule deaths. This has the benefit of making sure the population is stable. Generally, the elderly are released. That helps to make sure that the people who are no longer capable of contributing work efforts to the operation of society are not resource drains for too many years. Another advantage is that releasing a person could be seen as humane. A person that has a terminal illness could choose to be released in order to secure a pain-free death. This scenario could also apply to a community member that sustains an injury that diminishes their quality of life to the point that they would rather die. That person could choose to be released in order to end their own suffering and not take up the community's resources trying to keep themselves alive.


In the novel, there appear to be several advantages to release. However, remember that these so-called advantages can only be viewed through the lens of the novel's dystopian world. In reality, since release constitutes state-sponsored violence against individuals, the advantages of release can be said to be ambivalent at best.
Having said that, I would like to highlight the advantages of release, as portrayed by the novel:
a) The old and the infirm need no longer burden society with their needs. Release will effectively liberate citizens from the responsibility of ensuring the welfare of a large segment of society. As such, the release of an elderly person is considered "a time of celebration for a life well and fully lived."
b) Anyone who breaks the rules three times will be summarily released; this means that there will be virtually no crime to tarnish the peace in this dystopian world.
c) Identical twins can be released without question; usually, the smaller and weaker twin is chosen for release. In this way, society will not need to be burdened with overpopulation.
d) Any "newchild" who does not gain the required weight and who fails to sleep soundly through the night (well enough to be placed with a family unit) can be released. This again means that society will not need to be burdened with the care of children who fail to thrive.
e) Anyone who feels that he/she does not fit in can obtain permission to be released. Those who suffer from extreme  debility can also apply for release. The right to be released allows citizens to decide their fate in the midst of suffering and affliction.
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How does Bilbo show leadership and courage in The Hobbit?

Bilbo’s increase in confidence and courage is the defining aspect of his character arc. At the beginning of the novel, he is shut away content in his Hobbit hole, happy to remain separate and coddled from the rest of the world. In the movie, Bilbo chooses to join the dwarves on their quest out of a sense for adventure. In the book, however, Bilbo wants nothing to do with them and only joins because he had been duped into signing a contract. Despite being on the adventure somewhat against his will, Bilbo still proves himself time and again, saving the dwarves from the spiders, the trolls, and a number of other dangers they encounter along the way. Bilbo’s character arc has even been cited as a sort of Christian metaphor for the growth of the soul, though how much Tolkien intended on this front is up for debate. From a thematic standpoint, the ring of invisibility also plays into Bilbo’s brand of bravery. If Hobbits are the overlooked creatures of Middle Earth, then it is noteworthy that...
Read more

In “Goodbye to All That,” Joan Didion writes that the “lesson” of her story is that “it is distinctly possible to remain too long at the fair.” What does she mean? How does the final section of the essay portray how she came to this understanding, her feelings about it, and the consequences of it?

In this classic essay, Didion describes moving to New York City from her native Sacramento at the age of twenty-one, and, as she freely admits, a somewhat naive twenty-one, her mind, "programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard about New York," with the typical feeling, at that age, that, "nothing like this...has ever happened to anyone before." Intending to stay for only six months, she falls in love with the city. As she says, "I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again." This initial love led her to prolong her residency, since, "I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month." But as the next years roll past, and the "new faces" she encounters...
Read more

Why does the poet say "all the men and women merely players"?

It's one of the most famous lines in literature: All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players . . . This famous saying comes from Shakespeare's play As You Like It, and it's spoken by Jacques. What he's saying here is that simply going about our daily lives is a type of performance. Just like actors on a stage, we all have roles to perform: Daughter. Student. Sister. Captain of the soccer team. The fact that Shakespeare writes that men and women are merely players suggests that the roles are preordained and that a person's choice in being a mother, for example, or a doctor or starting point guard for the Brooklyn Nets is out of their hands. What roles a person performs over the course of their lifetime is up to fate. The notion that "all the world's a stage" has entered pop culture, but within the context of the play, this idea does not sit well with Jacques. He's a pessimist, and the idea that everything is up to fate makes...
Read more