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Why do the citizens of Jonas' community believe that the strict rules of the community are good?

I believe your question is in reference to Lois Lowry's novel, The Giver, which tells the story of a young boy named Jonas who holds a special role in his highly regulated community. There are at least two answers I can think of.


First, the people of Jonas' community have grown up in this strict way of life and have grown accustomed to it. As we learn from the experience with Gabe, people who do not adjust well to society are "released." Because these people have been told all their lives that this is the way society ought to be, and all evidence points to the efficiency of such a community, they do not have any reason to believe otherwise. What's more, almost everyone in Jonas' community lacks knowledge or memory of things like suffering and joy. Life just is as it is for most people. It is not until Jonas is given these memories by his mentor that he comes to suspect that his community might not be ideal.


We should also consider the practicality of Jonas' society, which is arguably modeled after highly utilitarian or communist societies as described by Karl Marx. In a truly communist society, everything is done for the benefit of the community and organized through the state. While it's a very attractive idea to create a society that aims to entirely support all its members equally, we find in The Giver that some people still suffer and are sacrificed to achieve this ideal. The point I want to make is that the community Jonas grew up in is so highly regulated that it must have been "designed" at some point. The person or people involved in outlining and organizing such a controlled society must have believed that it was truly for the benefit of the community to impose such a strict degree of equality on all people. Even though it requires actions like the "release" of difficult babies, people in Jonas' community must have felt that their societal organization was the best way to do things. That is, if they questioned it at all.

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