There are similarities and differences between family life in Lowry’s The Giver and my family life here in Bellingham. To begin, family lives are similar between these two communities because families usually consist of adults raising children and not all adults end up with children in their life. But, the differences between our family lives are part of what makes the book so interesting.
First, in The Giver, adults must apply for a spouse and get matched. This is shown in the book when it says, “Even the Matching of Spouses was given such weighty consideration that sometimes an adult who applied to receive a spouse waited months or even years before a Match was approved and announced”.
On the other hand, in my family culture in Bellingham, it’s an adult’s choice to be with someone they want to be with. Second, in The Giver, children are born from a birthmother then sent to spouses that have applied for a child. This is shown in the book when it says, “Their Match, which like all Matches had been monitored by the Committee of Elders for three years before they could apply for children, had always been a successful one”. Whereas in my family life, the birthmother keeps the child she gives birth to.
Finally, in the novel, when a family loses a child they are given another child with the same name. I know this because in the book it says,” This new Caleb was a replacement child…Loss of a child was very, very rare”. But in my family life when a child is lost they are remembered and don’t receive a replacement child with the same name.
Family life in The Giver matters to the plot story because knowing what the differences and similarities about the real world and in the novel are important to understand, also it shows what problems the community in The Giver go through in life and what problems they don’t go through.
Those are some similarities and differences about family in The Giver and my family life in Bellingham.
