Out with the old, in with the new! :D

Disclaimer:
Hey guys, I'm sadly looking to wrap up this blog soon but I have two more posts that I'm super excited to put out.

The first being this!

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Welcome back everyone! So on my spare time I decided(was told) to delve into my artistic side and create an alternate book cover for The Giver! I'm going to explain why I designed it the way it is, and will do so through addressing some of my personal ideas, as well as basic codes and conventions that I was taught in my prestigious English class this semester.


Goal: I wanted to create a cover that represented what feelings and ideas I got from reading the book. Personally, I believed a theme centered on the purity of life without emotions, was a big part of what made the life within the community so disconcerting to me. Being the hot tempered, but jolly person that I am, all of the people I have relationships with understand how I act, and they react in turn with their own displays of emotion. This back and forth can take the shape in laughter, anger, frustration, miscommunication, shouting, happiness and so much more. This dynamic aspect of my relationships is what I cherish, and what the community has completely abolished and restricted. As such, I wanted to my cover to be depicting how emotion is infectious, even to oneself, and how people almost always want to share theirs with those around them. Hopefully I'm at least somewhat successful, as I really want you guys to appreciate its aesthetics and its underlying message.

(Note, the thing the red stuff is being poured on is the stump of a hand)

1. Medium.

I chose to hand draw my cover on a blank sheet instead of photo shopping, it due to my lack of knowledge on how to photo shop, and that I felt more creatively fulfilled by sketching it. I also thought that a more organic look to the art piece would help me in sending my underlying message to the viewer.

2. Fonts.

The variety of different fonts are not the result of laziness (I promise), but are a critical component of my idea for the cover. In the book, feelings are described as dangerous, unruly and should be controlled or restricted by any means necessary. This leads to the life governing rules and lifestyle imposed by the Elders that stop the people of the community from accessing basic human emotions, all in the quest to avoid strife, pain and devastation. By expressing the title and name of the author in multiple different fonts, I aimed to emphasize how emotions take different shapes, and in some occasions, can become uncontrolled and leak out of their container. This symbolizes the emotions that Jonas, and regular people like us, feel on a daily basis, and how it leads to us acting respectively of how we're feeling. This contrasts with the life in the community where people have no personality, and consistently follow the rules with no ambition to be unique or to do what they want, and in doing so, are bland, static beings. This idea is displayed by how I wrote "Giver", in the bottom right.

3. Colour.

Similar to the fonts, I used a myriad of different colours to display the varying emotions humans are subject to on a daily basis. Medical conditions aside, I believe that every person consciously, or unconsciously, debates their emotions on a second by second basis. Because of this I used the varying colours to illustrate that sentiment and to address how many emotions we may unknowingly handle throughout our lives. However, some colours that I used do address the textbook meanings. The liquid pouring down from the hand is specifically red. I chose this because I wanted to convey feelings of passion, frustration and anger, emotions that Jonas feels in increasing intensity over the course of the novel. Also, the alternating colours associated with the fonts and finger nails further push the idea of multiple emotions on to the viewer. They grey colour of the stump symbolizes emotional neutrality, which in essence, is the epitome of what the community is about.
The glaring white/blankness of the page is another attempt of mine to express the symbolism of colour and the state of emotions within the novel. I believe that the Elders think emotions are corruption, and that they taint their world. I left the background blank as it represents the world of Elsewhere, which without emotion is blank, but just like the hand and fingernails, it is painted by the colour of emotions, and in time, will become an art piece emotionally respective of the individual who created it.

Symbolism.

The hand drawn in the middle of the cover belongs to Jonas. The reasoning behind drawing it reaching down is found within the novel. As during the story, Jonas aspires to save his fellow community members from the stale, hideous world of the emotionally vacant. During his struggle to do so however, Jonas often feels anguished, furious but determined. These qualities are then depicted in the red liquid, which represents his emotions moving from him and onto the stump. The stump symbolizes the how members of the community are unable to feel emotion, even when Jonas tries to force them too. This occurs when Jonas attempted to and failed pushing a memory into his sister, Lily, like he had to Gabriel. This handicap is literally drawn as a cut off, or lost hand, as the rest of the community is literally unable to grasp the idea of emotion, even if they wanted too.



That's about it for my book cover, hope you guys enjoyed it!

My personal book cover

Pride Vs Prejudice... sike just prejudice

Sorry its been awhile from my last blog post guys, but I’ve been really busy with the *cough* tedious *cough* SEEP essay preparation and writing which drained a good portion of my last week away. But alas tis not but the mundane routine of a student’s life. On to more important things, I’ve been looking forward to writing up this post for quite awhile now, where I’m going to be addressing my personal views and biases about the book. Without further ado, I'm going to jump right in!

After finishing the The Giver, I realized there were many societal aspects within it that I was both angered and confounded by. As the stereotypical teenager I am, I disagreed heavily with the extremely invasive rules of the community. While I can understand that rules have to put in place to maintain a healthy learning and social atmosphere, the strict, governing laws present in the novel are at complete odds with the independence that I have enjoyed my entire life. Now although my inappropriate vocabulary gets in trouble every now and then, I still relish the fact that I am even able to do so. The ability, and decision, to cuss may seem like a bad idea to some, but personally, I find that it is something absolutely glorious about the world we live in. The fact that I am free to think and say what I want is an aspect of life I believe to be a necessity, not a privilege. My bias present here is that I can't, and won't, appreciate the intrusive ideology that rules the community within The Giver, due to my blessed life of freedom and independence that I have experienced thus far, and as a result, view the life within the community to be inferior to mine.

One thing I was surprised by though, was the complete absence of any homosexual couples within the community. It was explained in the novel that after applying to a spouse, the Match would be made based on things like energy level, intelligence and other factors. But it did not mention that gender would be a part of the decision. In respect to this ideology I had initially thought that if the compatibility of the two people are based solely on their mental characteristics, and that there was bound to be at least couple who shared the same gender. Seeing as how the emotions of the townspeople have been taken out of equation, I don't understand why the family units that make up the community constitute of only heterosexual couples. After giving this some thought, I came to the conclusion that this part of the process is most likely a result from the Elders consulting a Receiver of Memory, and being guided to the idea that having only heterosexual only marriages would ensure the peace and prosperity of the community. Consequently leading them to pair only heterosexual relationships even if in some situations, same sex couples would be more compatible. Honestly, I don't know how I feel about this, as it is confusing.

All in all, I felt that The Giver delivered the false utopia-dystopian fantasy quite well. With the all powerful control of the totalitarian Elders, and fall sense of sanctity, the community in which Jonas grows up in is a very intriguing place. The only thing I wish that Lowry could have addressed, even slightly, would have been the idea of homosexuality, or same sex couples, in an emotionally starved world.

Mapping The Mind

Here's my mindmap character analysis of Jonas in The Giver!

https://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show/711957627

English Algebra - The + me = Theme!

Real Talk, What Was a Major Theme in The Giver?

The Theme I Chose Was: The Value of the Individual.

While our Western media is the home to an unending campaign of advertisements that seek to devalue one's self-esteem and personal confidence; it is also the birth place of many social movements that prize individuality, and self-love as foundations that should be present in every person's life.

Jonas' personal views are at a sharp contrast with that of the extreme communitarianistic society in which he lives. Where the idea of individuality is non-existent and all the citizens are indiscernible from one another as none of them have any semblance of a personality. This maddening characteristic of his society is what angers Jonas as he goes on a journey of self-discovery.

I believe that over the course of the novel, a fundamental theme is the importance of being a unique individual and having your own personality. I noticed that as the book progresses, Jonas grows, becoming stronger, and more independent and confident as a result. His view of his community is described by the following quote: “They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.” 

― Lois Lowry, The Giver

Through it, Jonas shows his frustration to the reader how depressed and angry he was that his fellow townspeople are forbidden from experiencing the same happiness, and how badly he wants to change that. You can see instances of this when he asks his childhood friends if they notice anything "strange" about a flower, where he is hoping that they can see colour like he can. A more aggressive approach Jonas took was when he tried to transfer a memory into his sister, but failed to do so, most likely because of the emotion suppressing drugs she had taken. 

Let me "Give" you some reading strategies!!! (I'm so funny and original :P)

My Reading Strategies:

I found The Giver to be incredibly easy to read and follow along. This is owed to both the sentence structure, and diction chosen by the author Lois Lowry. The casual language and ideas that are spoken and expressed by the protagonist are respective of the aforementioned attributes of Lowry's writing style, and as such, fit the mold of a young adolescent quite well. By being a smooth and uncomplicated reading experience, I had more time to put towards reading strategies in order to glean a greater understanding of the novel. The methods I used to better understand The Giver include, writing down what I understood from a chapter, re-reading to make sure I didn't miss any underlying themes, symbolisms etc, and taking jot notes whenever I felt they were necessary.

ARISE VICTORIOUS FROM THE LITERARY WAR!!!

Through writing down small summaries of what happened in each chapter I read, I was able to cement my understanding of the text. If I failed to remember enough of what had occurred in the chapter, I would move onto my second habit of re-reading the it. The second time through the the text often helped me fully grasp the overall idea of the chapter, and in doing so, recall the events much more clearly. The last approach I applied to thoroughly interpret the novel would be intermittently taking jot notes on a separate paper, that outlined key and inter aspects of each chapter. Having these, alongside my short summaries, allowed me to go back to various chapters I had already read, and quickly remember their main points and concepts.