Reading and Writing Assignment for 3rd class, 3/10/16

In the world of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, there are lots of rules and rituals and people there must follow them or they would be released. For example, they must share their dreams and feelings to their family. That makes the Elders know everything and control everything, so the Elders can make sure that everyone in the community doesn't have any differences. 

People in the community also have to take a pill every morning. They thought that the pills are for keeping healthy. But actually, the pills had took colors, music, emotions and love away from their world. So they can not feel them.

At last, people in the community have to go home and stay at home before the evening. If they are still outside their house, maybe the Elder couldn't monitor them well so they could do things which aren't under the rules. 

The Elders uses the rules and the rituals to control the people and destroy their feelings. I just hate them.

Well, I just love this, Mark.  You have done an excellent job describing the rituals and rules, along with their purpose. Your writing just gets better and better.

 My favorite sentence, though, is that last one, I love the passion of it. But I  am also  impressed that, like most of the sentences in the writing, the concluding (final) ones are perfect in terms of both grammar and punctuation. I couldn't ask for more.

I will send you a comment or two via e-mail, but I have very little to say when it comes to improving what you wrote. 

Here is Cindy's response to the assignment:

In the world of Lois Lowry’s The Giver，there are many different rules.

The first rule I want to talk about is ‘everyone must take the pills when they become Teenager’s. I think this is a way the Elders control those people in community. The pills makes the people can’t feel the love between man and woman. They use the pills to stop the emotion and the appetency. Or the war will begin cause the appetency.

The second rule I want to talk about is the Jonas’ RECEIVER OF MEMORY rules. The last rule ‘you may lie’ makes me thinks a lot. ‘You may lie’ means in the community there is no one lies. Maybe lie is not good, but it is a way to protect you secret. And that means nobody have secret in the community.

Here is the third one: ‘People must follow the rules’. Maybe it isn’t a rule, but I think this makes people never try to break the rule. It makes people become primmer.

Hmm, I think you are right that "people must follow the rules" is the unwritten rule, and it is certainly true that in the community no one has any secrets.  But what do you think the purpose of all these rules is?  That was the last part of the assignment, and I would be very interested in your answer.

  In the world of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, people couldn’t keep their feeling of love. The family talked about their dreams every morning. If you had a stirring or reached the age of puberty, you would have to take a pill to erase the dream and controlled yourself from loving another person. The community didn’t want children to understand “love” too early. The purpose of this rule is to avoid the trouble of people loving each other, and mostly, control the population. So, there comes another rule—if you wanted to marry a person, you needed to apply to the committee. If you didn’t get the application eventually, you’d be single forever.

  There was also a rule of children wearing the same kind of jacket. That was just like the way the school used. In one hand, that was easily to control. In the other hand, that would make the children to be a team, an unbeatable team. And there was a strange rule that the children had to wear the jacket with the buttons on the back, so they should help each other when they were wearing it. Although it was really inconvenient, it was also an opportunity to learn to teamwork. Learning to teamwork is a good thing, but I think they should use another way!

Alfonso, This is very nicely done, and you picked out some important rules. I like, too, your choice of the verb "erase," and you use some important words correctly, words like "inconvenient," "eventually," and "opportunity." These are very common English words, and you will use them a lot, so it's good that you handle them so well. 

I see that you explain the purpose of each rule individually. Do you think there is an overall purpose, that the rules all share one main purpose?

Here is Oscar's response:

In the world of Loris Lowry’s The giver, people cannot have a feeling called stirrings, which means they cannot love others physically in some certain ages, they will take some special pills in order to clean up their ideas of other people’s body, that ritual has its own advantages, for example, It can prevent some illegal behaviours from happening and it can also make people concentrate on their works, but it is somewhat improper, because it is awful to restrict people’s wanting.

And also, people do not have the rights of selecting their jobs by themselves, because the elders in the community replace them to do this job, the elders are wisdom so maybe sometimes they will make the correct decisions but I still think it is a really bad ritual, because some people do not like the jobs which the elders chose for them, and their jobs are not flexible, so it is very hard for them to be extremely successful, everyone is normal in the community, maybe it is the controllers’ purpose, they do not want excellent genius, they just want normal people who listen to them respectfully.

The worst principal of the giver was that people cannot keep their dreams as secrets, the elders want to control citizens’ ideology by learning about what they are thinking, the dreams are the most convincing proofs of their ideas, so no one is allowed to keep their dreams as secrets.

Oscar, You make a very interesting point here:"maybe it is the controllers’ purpose, they do not want excellent genius, they just want normal people who listen to them respectfully."  I think that is exactly right.  Geniuses are not so easy to control, and the Elders don't want anyone to become too smart and too independent. 

You are very good at making transitions from one idea to another and your ideas connect up very well.  I especially like that last phrase "no one is allowed to keep their dreams as secrets."  You have done an excellent job of describing the rules and explaining their purpose.   I will send you some additional comments via e-mail.