The Giver - What Are Memories to Us?

The Giver

What are memories to us?

        When we look back to the past we can see everything that we have gone through, the good and the bad things, those happy moments and those days of pain, but behind all that we can see who we were, who we are now, and with all that information we can see who we will be in the future. In the book “The Giver” we can see that in the moment when Jonas receives the memories he realizes the true meaning of life, he starts to feel complete. That’s the reason why we need to have memories, they complete us, they teach us and give us the key to appreciate life.

        Sometimes we remember a person or a place and we feel empty inside, we feel sad, we want to go back there to revive that moment, because we want to feel that way again. But our only way to keep that feeling alive is by collecting the memories we have of that time. And just like the Giver says in the book “If you were to be lost in the river, Jonas, your memories would not be lost with you. Memories are forever.” (The Giver, p. 144). They complete us, memories make us the person we are today. And if we loose our memories we won’t be the same person ever, we will be worse. Not in the sense that we will do bad things but in the way that we won’t have the same way of thinking we will be incomplete, because memories define us.

        Also when we are talking about memories we have to understand that if we don’t look back we won't know what we did wrong and in what we succeed, and we won’t know why we are here, what decisions brought us here, and infinite questions come to our minds. That’s the reason why we study history because we need to find answers, we need to define who we are and we have to know all the steps that our ancestors follow to lead to what we have today. Like what they did to create artifacts that have developed in special tools we use in our daily life.