The Giver- Jonas character development

In this book, one character develops. This character is Jonas. He starts out as an unknowing 'robot'-like community member, just like the rest of the society. He doesn't know that there is more out there than what is in front of his eyes. "Jonas smiled back at his sister. Lily's feelings were always so straightforward, fairly simple, usually easy to resolve. He guessed that his own had been, too, when he was a Seven." (pg. 7) Jonas doesn't really 'feel' before he is selected. Lily doesn't 'feel' either. Nobody in the community really knows how to 'feel'. "'I felt sad today,' he had heard his mother say, and they had comforted her. But now Jonas had experienced real sadness. He had felt greif. He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those." (pg. 132) Jonas now understands real emotions and I believe that when he hears someone in the community say that they feel a certain way, he knows that they don't really understand what that feeling really is. With sadness, Jonas has felt it many times through memories and through his own experiences, but his mother really has no need to be sad. She doesn't know the truth. Jonas begins to develop from an unknowing child, to the second most wise person in the community.

"Jonas trudged to the bench beside the Storehouse and sat down, overwhelmed with feelings of loss. his childhood, his friendships, his carefree sense of security- all of these things seemed to be slipping away. With his new, heightened feelings, he was overwhelmed by sadness at the way others had laughed and shouted, playing at war. But he knew that they could not understand why, without the memories. He felt such love for Asher and for Fiona. But they could not feel it back, without the memories. And he could not give them those. Jonas knew with certainty that he could change nothing." (pg. 135)

Jonas feels sad and depressed that the people around him are so unaware and oblivious to what he can see and to what he knows could be. He knows love. He feels love, but his parents tell him that love is a meaningless feeling. He feels completely the opposite. Love is one of the strongest feelings he feels. He is upset that everyone that he loves cannot understand how to love him back. With Jonas's development he gains sadness that everything that he knows cannot be the way that he sees it in the memories.