The Discipline Of Childhood In The Giver

Lois Lowry(1937-)is a famous children novelist who has won many literary awards in America.The Giver,which was given the 1994 Newbery Award,is a young adult dystopia.Combining the elements of young adult literature and dystopian literature,it presents a disciplinary society in which children are dehumanized and deprived of their innocence.In China,more and more scholars have been attracted by the novel.In the West,critics have analyzed the theme of discipline and issues about children.Nevertheless,among their research,there is little which anchors on the discipline of childhood in the novel.Discipline,first put forward by Michel Foucault,refers to a micro power mechanism.Cultural studies contend that people who are inferior in such aspects as class,race,gender and age are more likely to be under power.As the inferior,children in The Giver are liable to disciplinary power of the adult world and turn into machines without individuality and subjectivity.This thesis analyzes the discipline of childhood in The Giver from three aspects:body,emotion and mind.The first chapter analyzes the discipline of children's bodies.When they are born,children are under bio-politics,which determines whether they can live or not.When they are growing up,their physical appearances are disciplined through genetic modification and clothing control.Moreover,children's sensations such as visual sense,auditory sense and sexual desire are suppressed in case that they get to know about the world and develop their own thoughts.The second chapter analyzes the discipline of children's emotions.On the one hand,children's "harmful" intrapersonal emotions are eliminated through medication repression and linguistic control;on the other hand,children's interpersonal emotions are denied through weakening their bonds with their family and friends.The third chapter analyzes the discipline of children's minds.Being imposed precise language,children's minds are stereotyped.Being deprived of the access to history,children have no reference to know the truth of the present society,thus developing benign and disciplined minds.Lowry presents a community which is a seemingly utopia but turns out to be a dystopia.In this rigorously planned community,children are under discipline,thus losing their natural innocence and individuality.On the one hand,Lowry appeals to pay more attention to children's healthy development and not to discipline them;on the other hand,writing about the protagonist's escape from the community to "Elsewhere",Lowry endows children with agency of resisting the power imposed upon them and improving the society.