Language and Power: A Foucauldian Reading of Lois Lowry’s The Giver

Abstract

Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1992) delineates a nightmarish utilitarian state where human beings are produced through artificial insemination for the optimal service of the state. The current paper explores how reality is constructed by power through operationalization of discourse. The Giver depicts a totalitarian state that not only contrives a systematic way of controlling the minds of its subjects but also their milieu. The regime employs genetic engineering and linguistic manipulation to keep its citizens controlled, collectivized and contented in an unusual way. The government controls the weather and topography to introduce the Concept of Sameness in the state. The totalitarian regime either erases certain words from its social fabric or transmutes them into certain bizarre concepts that are thought to be diseases which need medication. In addition, the paper also asserts that in the novel language acts as a double-edged sword that acts as oppressive as well as liberative weapon depending upon its usage.