Lit Circle Blogpost 2 ✏

Why does Jonas find the instruction about lying so disturbing?

I found this question very interesting when I read it out of the three, so I immediately chose it. I also thought this question made me think about the answer carefully.

As we have all repeated many times before, Jonas lives in a extremely controlled society, one that goes by the moral of "sameness" this means nothing and no one can be different, no one can be a "someone" In this controlled society there are obviously rules, and very strict ones at that. All his life Jonas has been raised to not only obey these rules, but live by them. And out of these millions of rules, (that seem to be able to fill large books) one of the very large one is to never lie.and this is exactly the rule that The Receiver is able to break. "He had never, within his memory, been temped to lie. Asher did not lie, Lily did not lie, his parents did not lie no one did..." (pg.71)

Now, Jonas was obviously surprised after reading this, and the question that I have to answer is why. This is what I think. As I wrote earlier Jonas has been raised to follow all rules in his community constantly to the extent that even without thinking he does so. For example when talking to the Giver he accidentally interrupted, without even thinking he apologized, only to again follow the rules as the was no apologizing in the Annex room. "I apologi- Jonas began, and then stopped, flustered, remembering there were to be no apologies." (pg. 91) I can understand why Jonas would be so surprised when a big change in his life is made and know this because I can definitely connect.

Very recently I joined touch as an afterschool activity, and on the first day were described the rules, and one of the most important was to always pass backwards. At first I thought this was going to be quite an easy rule to follow, but I was proved wrong. All my life I have been taught to pass forward to get closer to the goal and this seems logical. And at the time I guess this new rule could too. But when I got on the field I noticed this small change became big. I hadn’t noticed that I was passing forward that I did it automatically just as Jonas had apologized automatically as well. When I came home I noticed my connection and realized why it felt like such a change to Jonas and why he might of felt uncomfortable.

I hope to find little things like this that I can connect to later on.