When you ride alone...

Yesterday I did vacuum and I did finish Collapse, and today I read The Giver in one fell swoop (not hard to do). I liked it, and it reminded me of my childhood, but something else occured to me - the hardly masked trail of propaganda running through this book.

To start out, the place where the main character, Jonas, lives is called the Community. Commun (...). In this Commune everyone is the same, to the point that color has somehow been phased out of peoples vision. It seems apparent the geneticists have purposefully done this, as well as made other changes to society in order to stifle diversity. It's considered taboo to point out someones difference - like Jonas's different colored eyes. There are no books, with the exception of a book of rules for the community, and a list of the functions of each of the community's facilities - the bicycle repair shop, the fish processing plant. All of society has been orchestrated in order for each person to have only common experiences and memory.

At first this is not seen as such a bad thing, in fact people seem relatively happy, unaware of their dull and ultimately meaningless lives (called meaningless by the main character once he discovers the impending euthanasia of everyone ultimately "released" from the community, either by old age or chronic misbehavior). It's after the main character begins to inherit these memories which show him that, in his own words there is not "only us," there is not "only now." Coupled with the fact that these new discoveries drive Jonas to anger at the fact that others lives are so flat, and ultimately causing him to leave the community in order to save these people from a life of meaninglessness, this is also a clear critique of censorship.

Furthermore, family planning is mentioned, not necessarily in a negative tone, however, but proported as a solution to hunger issues. The copyright to this book is 1993, as far as I can see, and China's one child policy becan in 1978, indeed, in the face of severe hunger issues, of which my Chinese teachers can attest.

I'm not saying the messages of this book are bad necessarily or that there are not good reasons to prize individuality and diversity, certainly when the alternative is purposeful elimination of diversity. I'm more surprised by the emotionality and appeal to sentiment present in this book, which expounds little but the ideals that should be held by a good little capitalist. And almost everyone I've talked to has had to read this in their public schooling.

In the questions for discussion at the end of the book, #2 is: In Jonas's community, every person and his or her experience are precisely the same. The climate is controlled, and competition has been eliminated in favor of a community in which everyone works only for the common good. What advantages might "Sameness" yield for contemporary communities? Is the loss of diversity worthwhile?

The obvious answer is no, but I'd question whether a 5th grader reading this would be able to tell you why the obvious answer is no. The message of this book is that 1: Such sameness is somehow associated with euthanasia (a link merely incidental in this case), 2: Such sameness deprives us of something, in return for safety, and 3: Such sameness is ignorant, probably among a few others.

Another book a lot of people were required to read in school is Farenheit 451, which is also quite obviously anti-censorship. I haven't read that book in a while, but my memories of it are much the same as this book in that - they are books meant to invoke associations of capitalist, democratic, or at least American values, with good feelings. Sameness is associated with euthanasia, dullness, and scary futuristic machines (in 451). Again, I'm not saying that many American values don't have good reasons for believing in them - what I am saying is what these books are are not explanations of those reasons through fiction, what they are is narratives meant to produce a necessary emotional link of either joy or despair - joy with american values - despair with communist/totalitarian values - in short, these books are propaganda.

I welcome any other thoughts.