Compare And Contrast The Giver And Pleasantville

540 Words3 Pages
Elisheva Phillips 12/28/10 I have recently read the novel The Giver, by Lois Lowry, and watched the movie Pleasantville. These works focus on making utopian societies. The Giver is about a boy named Jonas who lives in a community with many rules. He is assigned the job of the Receiver of Memory and goes through great amounts of pain and happiness during his training. Pleasantville is about David and his sister Jennifer who goes into their TV to a show called Pleasantville. This town is supposedly peaceful and pleasant. Although The Giver and Pleasantville are both about utopian societies, their characters, setting and the symbolism establish their greater complexity. The characters in The Giver and Pleasantville are both alike for various reasons. One reason that they are alike is the main focus; they both are about their own version of perfect worlds. In The Giver, the people of the community are brain washed. So too, in Pleasantville the citizens don’t realize how different their world is to the real world. Another reason is that the main characters both have other siblings. Jonas has Lilly who helps him a little in the novel. David has Jennifer who goes with him into the TV to Pleasantville. Alike and different in their own ways, the setting in The Giver and Pleasantville shows an important part in this book. One way they are alike is that they both are “utopian societies.” Their settings are in one place with many rules. One of them is that you can’t be rude or disrespectful to other people. Another is that you can’t be violent and you can’t have guns. In Pleasantville, David and Jennifer live in the 1990s and are taken back to the 1950s in the show Pleasantville. David becomes Bud and Jennifer becomes Mary Sue. Jonas lives in a modern-type community. There are many examples of symbolism in The Giver and in Pleasantville, some similar and

More about Compare And Contrast The Giver And Pleasantville

Open Document