Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Post 4:The absence of love
Response based on a discussion of the novel in class
I agree that Jonas's society is an uniformed society.
Everyone in the community owned a bicycle; every family unit could only have two children, one male and one female. In the community, everyone has to own the same things as someone else. Even families could not decide to have more than 2 children because every family unit could only have 2 children at most.
I agree that Jonas's society is a ritualistic society.
They have ceremonies for the Ones all the way up to the Twelves. Every night, the evening telling of feelings would also be part of their daily rituals as they shared their feelings with one another in the family unit. There were an endless amount of rituals that everyone in the society had to go through and never once did they attempt to break out of all these rituals.
I agree that Jonas's society is a place where relationships are diluted.
Spouses are assigned instead of allowing the people to date and fall in love naturally before deciding to start a family. Birthmothers give birth to children, yet they themselves do not become the child's real mother. This results in no one knowing who actually gave birth to them. Even the Birthmothers do not have a chance to show any affection towards the babies they give birth to, as once they give birth to them, the babies are brought away to be nurtured by Nurturers.
The main reason why relationships are diluted and hard to cultivate is because of the lack of love in the community. Love is hardly present in the community. Even parents do not show love to their children as to them and everyone else, love was meaningless and had become almost obsolete. Also, I feel that it is also hard for the parents to actually love the child given to them since they were not with the child since she or he was born. They probably have not seen or heard of such a child until the day they received it during the first Ceremony. Furthermore, the parents do not know anything about love. Thus, they cannot love and can only show affection towards the child. When the child grows up, he or she will probably forget about the parents that brought him up. Instead, he or she will start another family unit and not interact or see the parents anymore. This way, the child cannot really form a proper relationship with his or her parents.
Even the children in the community cannot forge long-lasting relationships with their peers and make friends that can stay with them throughout their whole life. Once they become a Twelve, they are assigned different jobs and have to begin training daily. From then on, they cannot hang out or spend much time with their childhood friends anymore.
In this community, it can be seen that relationships are not natural most of the time. Instead, they are all planned and organised. Also, relationships are never long-lasting because everyone has to spend most of their day working and can rarely spare time to make or be with their friends.
