There Could Be Love And There Shall Be

This week's blogpost is yet again focused on The Giver Literature Circles - the fourth one. The third blogpost was commenting and that's the reason it is missing from my blog. Find it on one of my peers' blogs - Cienna's. Again, moving on, this blogpost is more precisely focused on freedom and choice.
Here's what the blogpost is based on:
'Gabriel's breathing was even and deep. Jonas liked having him there, though he felt guilty about the secret. Each night he gave memories to Gabriel: memories of boat rides and picnics in the sun; memories of soft rainfall against windowpanes; memories of dancing bare-footed on a damp lawn.
"Gabe?"
The new child stirred slightly in his sleep, Jonas looked over at him.
"There could be love" Jonas whispered.

The next morning, for the first time, Jonas did not take his pill. Something within him, something that had grown there through the memories, told him to throw the pill away.' - The Giver (A MUST READ!)

We are supposed to find the reasons of why this passage and chapters 16-18 relate to freedom and choice and I have many ideas to that - since I enjoy thinking of these things often.

My first reason that the 2 chapters and this passage relates to freedom and choice is because in this passage - Jonas chooses to not take his pill (when everyone else has probably never even thought of that, especially doing it on purpose.) He showed that he has a spark of freedom in him - slowly removing himself from the things that keeps the environment so safe, weak and boring. The pill keeps away emotions, the memories teach him the hidden past, The Giver told him of why it was safe and that made Jonas not want to always be in this environment that oddly reminds me of an empty kiddy playpen made out of plastic and has no way out except to climb over.

Also, Jonas -in these 2 chapters- had asked his parents if they loved him and they only 'enjoyed' him. Love is obselete to them, absolutely meaningless. Even Jonas knows it's the complete opposite, especially when he thought "Meaningless? He had never before felt anything meaningful as the memory." But the parents wouldn't know better - it's drilled in to their mind is that they know these words but never use them (because the emotions never occur to them) and to them, it's meaningless, sadly. This relates to choice because if they knew love meant something, would they choose to say they loved Jonas? But it doesn't exist to them.

Finally, when Asher, Jonas, Fiona and the other twelves play their game and as Jonas realizes it is war - it relates to freedom and choice because if the committee didn't have such a tight grip on control, it would bring freedom and the twelves would soon figure out it was war. Then, it relates to choice because if they had seen what Jonas had seen and knew war existed: would they still play the game of war?