As I know, by the time this letter reaches you, you will have been well informed of that fact that I am missing. What I'm sure, is that your confused. Mom, dad, Asher, Fiona, you, and everyone else. They are confused, curious. You must be wondering why? Why I left, right? After I started my job, I began to realize the flaws that the community has; freedom, choice, colors, and feelings. None of that existed in the community, the community we all live in, pretending to live happily. From running away, I believe, that community I can help remove all this scars and can be saved from all the...... imprison.
" "Yes, I understand that they'll need you," Jonas had said at the end of the lengthy discussion and planning. "But I'll need you, too. Please come with me." He knew the answer as he made the final plea.
"My work will be finished," The Giver relied gently, "when I have helped the community to change and become whole."
"I'm grateful to you, JOnas, because without you I would never have figured out a way to bring about the change. But your role now is to escape. And my role is to stay."
From the days I have Received the memories from the current Receiver of Memory, I have learned many things about this community. Most of things I have learned is abysmal. The community you are currently living in is empty, blank. First of all, there are definitely no proper feelings! I am aware that you must think I have gone mad. No feelings? Am I right? Well, even though I'm well conscious of "The Evening Telling of Feelings", the citizens, including you, can only name feelings, not actually feel them. When we share our feelings of the day, do you ever feel the feeling? Feelings have to be felt, not said or described. I, for one, have felt these feelings. I have felt happiness, sorrow, sadness, angry, grief, hunger, and so forth. Some emotions go deep, and hard to describe yet easy to feel.
"On this unexpected, casual holiday he felt happy, as he always had on holidays; but with deeper happiness than ever before. Thinking, as he always did, about precision of language, Jonas realized that it was a new depth of feelings that he was experiencing. Somehow they were not at all the same as the feelings that every evening, in every dwelling, every citizen analyzed with endless talk.
"I felt angry because someone broke the play area rules," Lily had said once, making a fist with her small hand to indicate her fury. Her family - Jonas among them - had talked about the possible reasons for rule-breaking, and the need for understanding and patience, until Lily's fist had relaxed and her anger was gone.
"But Lily had not felt anger, Jonas realized now. Shallow impatience and exasperation, that was all Lily had felt. he knew that with certainty because now he knew what anger was. Now he had, in the memories, experienced injustice and cruelty, and he had reacted with rage that welled up so passionately inside him that the thought of discussing it calmly at the evening meal was unthinkable.
"I felt sad today, " he had heard his mother say, and they had comforted her.
But now Jonas had experience real sadness. he had felt grief. He knew that was no quick comfort for emotions like those.
These were deeper and they did not need to be told. They were felt." (Pages 131 to 132)
Our community, the very one I grew up in, has taken away a quality. It's called "color (s)". The Chief Elder mentioned it at the Ceremony where as I was selected to become the new Receiver of Memory. She called it being able to "See Beyond". This, just like feelings, have vanished. Back, back, and back. When humans were still able to see them, there was not only one color, there were more. Each had millions of shades too. There were; Red, Orange, Yellow, Light Green, Dark green, Light Blue, Dark Blue, Purple, and Pink! There are millions of more that you'll soon be able to see. Every object, every creature, every thing, has a colors. Similar to something having a shape, size, and color. Colors aren't gone though, the citizens just can't see them. From looking back all I've learned from the memories, I suspect that having feelings, or have the potential to feel, has something to do with being able to see. Feelings (as you will soon learn) have a sensation you will, and as I recall, when looking at colors there is a sensation to be felt. Or something close to that, for all I know it that this wonderful capability, is to die for. Once you see it you will never want to let it go. Without luck, we had to let that power go as well as being able to feel the feelings.
"The Giver sighed. "How to explain this? Once, back in the time of the memories, everything had a shape and size, they way things still do, but they also had the quality called, color. " " (Page 94)
"Jonas wasn't interested, just then, in wisdom. It was the colors that fascinated him. "Why can't everyone see them? Why did colors disappear?
The Giver shrugged. "Our people made that choice, the choice to got to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences. " He thought for a moment. "We gained control of many thing. But we had to let go of others."We shouldn't have!" Jonas said fiercely. " (Page 95)
"Days went by, and weeks. Jonas learned, through the memories, the names of colors; now he began to see them all, in his ordinary life (though he knew it was ordinary no longer, and would never be again)." (page 97)
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked him.Father sighed with disappointment. "Well, you know he wasn't here when you got home this morning because we had him stay overnight at the Nurturing Center. It seemed like a good opportunity, with you gone, to give it a try. He'd been sleeping so soundly."
"Didn't it go well?" Mother asked sympathetically.Father gave a rueful laugh. "That's an understatement. It was a disaster. He cried all night, apparently. The night crew couldn't handle it. They were really frazzled by the time I got to work.
"Gabe, you naughty thing," Lily said, with a scolding little chuck toward the grinning toddler on the floor."So," Father went on, "we obviously had to make the decision. Even I voted for Gabriel's release when we had the meeting this afternoon."
Jonas put down his fork and stared at his father. "Release?" he asked.
Father nodded. "We certainly gave it our best try, didn't we?"
"Yes, we did." Mother agreed emphatically.
Lily nodded in agreement, too.
"When?" he asked. "When will he be released?""First thing tomorrow morning. We have to start our preparations for the Naming Ceremony, so we thought we'd get this taken care of right away.
"It's bye-bye to you, Gave, in the morning." Father had said, in his sweet, sing-song voice. " (Pages 164 to 165)
From all that you have read so far, I believe your still confused as to why I had to leave. My memories, the memories from back, back, and back, needs to free. Free for all the citizens to reach. The only way for that to happen, is for me to either die or go far enough from the communities so the memories will leave and go back. Although you may not have well structured feelings, I'm under the impression that you, or anyone who knows me well enough, would want me to arise from this world. Oh, you probably won't even the feel the sorrow of me dying. Let me explain to you about an emotion unremembered from long ago when it was alive in hearts of everyone, it was called love. I am sure you have heard of this feelings and educated not use it for it, I believe it is not Precision of language. Even called meaningless! If you knew, or if you felt such a feeling.... Oh, Lily! Sadly, it is something the committee gave away, as likely as not, for our own good.
" "Father? Mother?" Jonas asked tentatively after the evening meal. "I have a question I want to ask you."
"What is it, Jonas?" his father asked.
He made himself say the words, though he felt flushed with embarrassment. He rehearsed them in his mind all the way home from the Annex.
"Do you love me?"
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all the people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise of language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes', " his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, " 'Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes." "
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents. " (pages 126 to 127)
Despite the fact I was scheduled to leave a bit later, most probably on the day of Ceremonies, I didn't. The motivation that drove me to take off in my journey was Gabriel. Something else I've learned about the community is the truth about release. Unlike the stories (and lies) Father and Mother tell us about Elsewhere and how the people who have been Released go to Elsewhere. Instead they are killed! Injected with some of sort poison. I know very well you won't believe me, and assume I'm making this up, but unfortunately I have seen evidence with my own eyes, and you will not believe who was caught, it was Father. Call to the memory of Father retelling us, at dinner about the twins. Well, I was curious to see the Ceremony of Release for the poor, maybe lucky, child getting released. Instead what I saw, was the shocking truth behind all these murders. But, do not panic, Father was (sadly) instructed to do so. It was a part of his job, and as far as you read now (unless your skipping ahead) you should at the very least understand that he can't, and he didn't have feelings to feel for the hapless infant. I, differ from Father, I actually felt something in me for Gabriel when I absorbed the knowledge that Gabriel was voted to be released. I just knew I had to save the little kid, I felt love for him.
"It had happened at the evening meal. The family unit was always eating together as always: Lily chattering away, Mother and Father making their customary comments (and lies, Jonas knew) about the day. Nearby, Gabriel played happily on the floor, babbling in his baby talk, looking with glee now and then toward Jonas, obviously delighted to have him back after the unexpected night away from the dwelling.
Father glanced down toward the toddler. "Enjoy it, little guy," he said. "This is your last night as visitor.""What do you mean?" Jonas asked him.Father sighed with disappointment. "Well, you know he wasn't here when you got home this morning because we had him stay overnight at the Nurturing Center. It seemed like a good opportunity, with you gone, to give it a try. He'd been sleeping so soundly."
"Didn't it go well?" Mother asked sympathetically.Father gave a rueful laugh. "That's an understatement. It was a disaster. He cried all night, apparently. The night crew couldn't handle it. They were really frazzled by the time I got to work.
"Gabe, you naughty thing," Lily said, with a scolding little chuck toward the grinning toddler on the floor."So," Father went on, "we obviously had to make the decision. Even I voted for Gabriel's release when we had the meeting this afternoon."
Jonas put down his fork and stared at his father. "Release?" he asked.
Father nodded. "We certainly gave it our best try, didn't we?"
"Yes, we did." Mother agreed emphatically.
Lily nodded in agreement, too.
"When?" he asked. "When will he be released?""First thing tomorrow morning. We have to start our preparations for the Naming Ceremony, so we thought we'd get this taken care of right away.
"It's bye-bye to you, Gave, in the morning." Father had said, in his sweet, sing-song voice. " (Pages 164 to 165)
Lily, it is my time to leave now, so I shall end this brief letter to you. I wish very much indeed that I could have given a proper farewell to you, but for the sake of the community's future I have to. I am heading out of the community, off to Elsewhere, with my head held high for I know I'm leading the community and it's people to a better future. I hope, after every else realizes for what reason I have left, that I did it for their better and shall at the very least, in their hearts become proud of me. Lily, you have, and always will be, my lovely little sister, whom I am writing this precious letter, who are one of the individuals that I have taken a life-taking risk. Lily you shall always stay in my heart and my desire is that you too, shall treasure me in your heart with love.
With all the love,
From your one and only brother,
Jonas.......
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