"Released To Elsewhere", a trope that this book named, usually describes a mandatory euphemism for "death". In The Giver, though, we're left with the impression that the Givers and Receivers are solely responsible for carrying all of society's repressed knowledge of pain and death, and we never see anything suggesting that anyone (even the Elders) is aware that "release" is "death". It's possible, then, that the Community's leaders don't use the term euphemistically, but simply because they just don't know any better.
At one point, Jonas receives a memory of poachers in Africa killing an elephant for its ivory, and he is baffled by the sight of men with dark skin. In his narration, he briefly says that the Giver told him that people once had different skin colors, implying that filtering out those of different races was an essential part of Sameness. Lowry is vague about how it happened, but let's be honest: when the government wants to get rid of "undesirable" races in Real Life, it's never pretty. Forced sterilization? Mass exile? Full-on ethnic cleansing? Any way you slice it, the people who started Sameness probably have some serious atrocities to answer for.
The methods by which sameness was achieved may not necessarily have been as horrific as sterilization and ethnic cleansing. It is mentioned that there are other communities, so potentially they only use a form of segregation in which people of different races have their own sets of communities. Each group has its' own Receiver, and does not communicate with any other communities. So the establishment of sameness may have involved some pretty strong racism, but without mass killings and sterilizations.
Though this also raises the question of what happened to people of mixed ethnic backgrounds. If there's a Community for every major ethnic group, what did the government do with people who couldn't fit into a single Community?
Good point. Maybe they put them with whichever ethnic group they looked closest to.
How can people in the Community become airplane pilots if everyone in the Community *
other than Givers and Receivers, obviously
is completely colorblind?
Can someone explain to me why this is a problem? Not trying to be a smartass here, I genuinely don't know what the problem with color blind pilots would be.
Colorblind people are barred from becoming pilots in most government-run organizations *
From my limited research, I think that there are some places where colorblind people can earn private pilot licenses, but I'm not entirely sure about that
because most safety signals in aviation (runway markings, signal lights, aircraft markings, etc.) are based around color-coded lights and signs. Presumably, color-blindness can also make it harder to distinguish distance and color boundaries, which can be hazardous when flying.
Then why are they allowed to get driver's licenses? Cause there are fewer markings/signs/lights or did the color blind person I know lie to get his driver's license?
You can still read traffic lights by looking at the position of the light (green on the bottom, yellow in the middle, red on the top) and most road signs have easily recognizable shapes and symbols that you can still read if you can't see color. Color is a lot more important with air traffic signs, though, since they have to be read from much farther away. And, y'know...whether or not someone can theoretically operate a vehicle if they have to, they tend to be a lot stricter with handing out licenses when said vehicle is a 50 foot-long flying machine that can kill hundreds of people if it crashes.
In a society where everybody is colorblind, they probably wouldn't use color-coded signals in the first place.
Since sex is never directly mentioned or acknowledged when discussing the Birthmothers, it's generally assumed that they're impregnated by anonymous sperm donors. But how can anyone donate sperm if none of the men have any sex drive?
I almost hate suggesting this, but: cattle prod to the anus. Well, someone did it in Law & Order: SVU to get sperm!
Something This trouper picked out about the Birthmothers that I'm not sure if it's Fridge Horror or not: In the Community, you get your job at age 12. You have a short training period and then can give birth for three years before you are sent to do hard labor for the rest of your working life. 12, 13 and 14-year-olds are giving birth!!
