Reading and Writing Assignments for 4th class 3/17/16

In the words of writer Willaim Faulkner, "the past is never dead, it is not even past", it relates to Jonas's assignment as the receiver of memories.

I think this sentence means the history may come again. Things in the future may be just like the things had happened in the past. I think the receiver's job is to make that the people's mistakes in the past not to happen again in the future.

In the words of writer William Faulkner, “The past is never dead, it is not even past.”in the book The Giver, Lois Lowry build a word what don‘t have any memory of the past. In the world, only the Receiver of memory can get the memory from past. Like what is Faulkner say, we will use the past any time and any day. The past is never dead. That is why the Receiver appear and what is the Receiver do.

Hi Mark,  I think you have definitely understood a big part of what Faulkner meant  with his quote, especially where you say "I think this sentence means the history may come again." In part, Faulkner definitely mean that history repeats itself.  

That's  also an interesting interpretation of the Receiver's job. We'll soon see if you are correct. Good work.

Hi Cindy. I like what you say here. I am particularly interested in the idea that "we will use the past any time and any day." That's definitely a part of what Faulkner was talking about. More than most, he believed that the past is always with us. Of course, that raises the question of how the past is with us.  Good work. 

Here is Alice's response:

 

In the words of writer William Faulkner, “The past is never dead, it is not even past.” In my own words, it means that the past is a memory of all of us, we may forget it, but it would not disappear. In our lives, every second and everything that happened were all past, if there are not such a thing as past, there may not be today and all of us standing here or doing different things.

In The Giver, this quote may play an important role. Jonas had become the receiver of the memory, so if there are past that those people in the community has forgotten, he is the one to find them back. Just like William Faulkner said, it’s never dead, because you can bring them back; it’s just not past, because it’s a brand new wonderland for you to discover.

Yes Alice, you have that right. Faulkner was very aware of the effect of the past on the present. And you are right again that Jonas is the person who holds on to the past, much as the people in the community would like to forget it. Well done. 

In the words of writer William Faulkner said “the past is never dead, it isn’t even past”. I think the past is just like the memories and the histories. In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, people didn’t have the memory of the past. But that didn’t mean they don’t use the past. In fact, we can learn many things from the past. After knowing the mistakes of the past, we won’t make the same mistakes. The time past, but there was something left--the technologies and knowledge. We need the past because there were many things we used that were from the past, and we were always using the past—the technologies and knowledge, too!

Hi Alfonso,  As we say in English, you hit the nail on the head (got it exactly right). The past is in our memory, so it never dies.

And I agree we can learn many things from the past (or not in some cases where the past repeats itself because we refuse to learn from it). I wish you had talked more about how they use the past in The Giver because that is a really interesting point. As I see it, they use the past by suppressing or rejecting it. Very interesting thinking, so maybe we can talk more about that point in class. 

Here is Oscar's response:

I think the meaning of Faulkner’s quote was that the historical events will be kept in people’s memories forever, and also, history is circulating regularly, something happened in the past will happen in the future. Faulkner’s family was a slave-owning family in the past, in that period of time, black people in the south are slaves for white, their masters are cruel and cold-blooded to them, this was not only impacted Faulkner deeply but also haunted the whole American society, and finally, the slavery was abolished. The job of the receiver of memory is very important because history is a valuable thing to reference when you meet some problems, as I said, the history is circulating regularly, so when the government meet some problems, the receiver can give useful advice because he has learnt about history.

That is correct Oscar. Faulkner's grandfather did own slaves, and it is true that Faulkner thought history did not vanish from memory. From his perspective, it stayed around to influence our present.  You have clearly understood the quotation.

I'm not sure, though, that the Receiver gets to give much good advice, as he says "Only when they are faced with something that they have not experienced before. Then they call upon me to use the memories and advise them. But it very seldom happens. "