Kara's Writing

After we read The Giver, I asked Kara to write two essays.  The first one was to write an ending since they left it open ended (thank you, Jessica, for that idea).  She copied the last paragraph from the book and made it her first paragraph.  I thought that was a nice touch.

Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, Jonas thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.

The sled stopped and Jonas, clutching Gabriel close, holding on to consciousness, stumbled forward, following a subtle path through the snow. A thick line of pine trees marked the dead end of the road and curled around, going back for a short ways until falling short. Hauling himself forward, Jonas peered between the branches of a tree that had recently fallen and saw a village, alight with candles and, seeing through the windows, those familiar, strange trees with lights draped across the branches.

Joy fueled his steps as Jonas climbed over the fallen tree, and Gabriel woke as the pool of light penetrated his sleep. Gabriel, too, seemed happier once the welcoming hands of warmth flowing from the houses wrapped around them.

Jonas forced himself forward, legs shaking from the bitter cold, and dragged himself up to the door nearest to him. A thick circle of short, chopped branches hung on the door—he recognized it as a wreath—and more of the lights draped across the indoor trees decorated the exterior of the small home. On a windowsill sat a detailed figurine of a plump old man with a red outfit and a sack full of bulky items.

Unable to knock while holding Gabriel, for fear of his arm giving out if he tried to hold him with one hand, Jonas tried to gently kick the door repeatedly. He had to stop when the leg he was supporting himself with buckled. The door opened and, sitting awkwardly on the steps, Jonas saw a kind face looking down at him. Inside was a family, a whole group ranging from the Old to young children, all looking kindly at him. And Jonas and Gabriel were welcomed into their home.

It was a great shock to the people of Jonas’s old community when memories came flooding back to them. They were hit with a variety of terrible things, such as hunger and pain and loss, mixed with good things such as colors, the feeling of a purring kitten’s soft fur, and memories of birthday parties.

Even with the good things, there were bad things mixed in, and that was enough. The community wanted to reject the memories. They would rather not have good things than have bad things. And now, they were each individually going to the Giver, begging for him to take the memories. Each time, he refused, giving them no explanation.

Eventually, it quieted, and the community tried to go back to routine. Except the memories kept bothering them. When another pair of twins were born, the Nurturers didn’t want to release one of them; they each had a thin wisp, a tiny grasp on the memories, and, though they didn’t know why, they were unsettled by the idea of releasing a child.

It came time for one of the Old to have a Ceremony of Release. Again, for some unknown reason, nobody wanted to release her. Finally, family units began gradually, one by one, voting for things to change.

And so, after a while, things changed.

Here is the second essay where I asked her to compare and contrast Jonas with Jesus.

There are several similarities between Jonas and Jesus; one more noticeable than all the others. The biggest, if you will, is that they both lift a huge burden for us. Jesus lifted the weight of our sins from our shoulders when He died on the cross. He took our sins and put the burden upon his own shoulders during the time He was a human, then forgave us for them. In a similar way, the Receivers hold the painful, bad memories for us. One of the smaller ones is, instead of forcing us to live with our mistakes, they forgive us for them and they hold the terror of them back. They both know what has to happen to fix the world; at least partially.

That introduces the first difference. Jonas runs away and gives the memories to the community so that they recognize their mistake and so that they can fix it, while, instead of returning our sins to us after a certain amount of time has passed, Jesus forgave us entirely and the pain of the sins vanishes forever. In the end, Jesus dies to take our sins away and open the gateway to heaven, but Jonas almost dies trying to force the memories back on the community so that they can realize what they’ve done and fix their mistakes. And, of course, there’s the biggest difference: Jonas is one in seven billion, perhaps more or less in that time, and lived a short 100 years at most, just a tiny part in God’s plan. Yet Jesus is the One, the Only, and He is forever and forever ago.

I think she did a beautiful job on both!