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The movie The Giver is a coming of age movie based off of a novel that portrays a boy rebelling against his society. The movie takes place in a Dystopian society that was created to prevent wars and conflict in the future. This Dystopian society was achieved by having a government that has full control over the people. In this society everyone is the exact same, no one feels human emotions such as love, joy, guilt, hate, remorse, etc. The government creates families on their own and assigns people who give birth to kids so each family is assigned to two kids. The government makes sure to monitor the kids as they grow up and assigns them to “roles' '/ jobs when they grow up based on the traits they have noticed in each child as they age through adolescence. The role they receive is determined when they are 18. The main character in this movie is named Jonas, he is the boy who gets assigned the role of the receiver of memories. The receiver of memories is the person who gets all the memories of what life was like before they created their society to be a reminder of why they shouldn't go back to that. Jonas had always felt as though he was different as he had the ability to see in color at times and he felt emotions that no one else could. He knew he was different when he started to have an emotion of lust towards one of his childhood friends named Fiona. Fiona was one of his closest friends along with his other best friend named Asher. When Jonas first started receiving memories he began to feel more and more emotions and started to not take his daily medication. When he separated himself from the rules and went on his own he became so curious as to the outside world and wanted to break free from the chains this society had on everyone. He started to encourage Fiona to stop taking her medication in the morning as well and she began to feel emotions and see colors again too. In the end Jonas rebelled against society with the help of Fiona and The Giver (his mentor) and went to break the barrier and return everyone's emotions and allow them to be free again. On this journey he took the baby named Gabriel that was going to be killed because he was underweight and took care of him as he was the only person that understood killing is wrong. He traveled with the baby to the barrier and along the way was almost killed by his best friend asher who was a pilot and was ordered to exterminate him. In the end Asher pretended to kill him because he was beginning to feel emotions as well and have faith in what his friend Jonas was doing. In the end Jonas made it to the barrier and restored the memories and emotions to everyone in the society. The main conflict of this movie is Jonah trying to pull away from society as they continue to try and control him and everything around him. The resolution of this conflict is Jonah just going for it and breaking the roles to do what he believes is right and breaking free from society by taking a risk. Some literary themes developed in this movie are the idea of pain and pleasure that comes with memories. In the movie we see Jonah go through a roller coaster of emotions when he is receiving the memories but in the end he decides all the pain is worth the pleasure he felt in these memories.

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The haunting story of THE GIVER centres on Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colourless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. The film is based on Lois Lowry's beloved young adult novel of the same name, which was the winner the 1994 Newbery Medal and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide.

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The haunting story of THE GIVER centres on Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colourless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.

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Born on October 25, 1927 Lawrence Kohlberg was an American Psychologist who developed the theory of moral development. Kohlberg was born in New York and graduated from Phillips academy after serving in the US merchant marines. Phillips was the youngest of four children, he lived with only one of his siblings though with his father due to a court order resulting from a divorce. He completed his degree in psychology at the University of Chicago where he later on taught at. After teaching at the University of Chicago he moved to teaching at Harvard University. The major components of the theory Kohlberg created consists of 6 distinct stages from infancy to adulthood. The stages are 1. avoiding punishment, 2. self-interest/ seeking reward, 3. pleasing others and wanting to be accepted, 4. making decisions based on laws and formalized rules, 5. justifying behaviors and seeing rules as things that can be changed, and 6. Moral behavior is based on self chosen ethical principles. These 6 stages are narrowed down into three subcategories, preconventional (1 and 2 ), conventional (3 and 4), and post conventional (5 and 6). The stages are based on age range, preconventional being from years 3-7, conventional taking place from years 8-13, and post conventional being adulthood. An assumption behind the theory is that it is based on the fact that people are inherently commutative, able to reason, and have the desire to learn about people and the world around them.  The Foundation of the theory, Based on Jean Paigets moral theory of judgment for children, focuses on the thinking process that occurs when one decides whether a behavior is right or wrong.The Belief of the theory is, moral understanding is correlated with cognitive development. People critique this theory and state, it describes males better than females, it’s too simple because we may use higher levels of reasoning for one situation and lower levels for others, appropriate for western not non-western people in terms of social norms like respect.

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Kohlberg’s 6 Stages of Moral Development

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The character I chose, Jonas, experienced the postconventional stage of Kohlberg’s theory. Jonah experienced the stage in which we transition into our adulthood and begin to see rules as things that can be broken and that our moral values are based on universal ethical principles. We see this in Jonas as when he goes off into the world and begins his role after highschool he starts to break the rules and stop taking his morning medications and laughing and starting to feel more emotion and influencing others to do so too. In terms of moral values being based on universal ethical principles, Jonas based his moral values off of the ethical principles he gained from the memories he gained from The Giver. The moral values he gained led him to want to break and free everyone from the dystopian society as he valued the ethical principles of the previous world in contrast to his new dystopian society.  Kohlberg would evaluate my character as a rebelling post conventional adult who went through these stages due to being enlightened with moral values. He would say he is willing to break the rules for what he believes to be correct and morally just and okay. He’s not trying to see what others want, he's only thinking of what he thinks other people want. Overall the theory is valid to use on Jonas because the test is known to be more biased towards white men and the character, Jonas, is a white male the theory is more valid and accurate to use on him.

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The theory did a good job in explaining my character's development as he went through the stages described in the theory during the movie. The stages helped give a better understanding for why Jonas was making these decisions. I would say the theory did a good job of capturing all the experiences of my character in a more holistic idea. In terms of what was going on internally with all these new emotions I don't think the theory did a good job of touching base on that. Although the theory is good at describing the experiences and development of Jonas I don't think this theory is the best fit as it goes based on the assumption that people are actively trying to understand one another and their differences and such and in Jonas’ society there is no difference between anyone other than looks and jobs. In the textbook in Chapter 10 on page 342 it talks about how it is important for one to understand cultural differences and such to develop but in Jonas’ society there is no such thing which invalidates the theory in a sense. Now given Jonas’ gender and race this theory is valid as it is mainly based on white males, but in terms of culture it was more of a western theory whereas in Jonas' society there was no western it was just his society and everyone was the same.

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Pomerantz, A. M. (2019). Chapter 10 Diversity in Psychology: multiculturalism, gender, and sexuality. In My psychology (p. 342). Macmillan Higher Education.