[ Q u a i n t Q u a g m i r e s ]

Quick plot summary of The Giver : there are no feelings, pain, war, color, etc., only happiness. When the community went over to this state, it removed those bad memories, but they can’t completely disappear, so the Receiver is the sole keeper of the community’s collective memory. This person bears the pain and has deeper emotions than everyone else. Jonas, a 12 year old kid, is the next Receiver. He is able to love, see color, etc. and is frustrated by the community. So he and the Giver plot for him to run away, and when he does, the memories he has will be released back into the community. That’s all you need to know for this next bit to make sense. My 3 rd teacher sat in the middle of circle of eager kids, all sitting crisscross-apple-sauce, anticipating story time. We would continue reading The Giver , a thrilling and slightly scary dystopia. We were at the part where the Giver had started transferring the community’s memories to Jonas, the next Receiver. The first memo...

            I recently started a TV series called “The Man on The High Castle.” In the first season, it introduces an alternative world set in 1962 in which the axis powers won WW2. This series takes a huge bit of fictional liberty but the effort they put into this alternate timeline is fascinating. I expected the show to follow a prototypical arc of a rebel against the oppressive regime, like Star Wars, but the show has been more nuanced. In addition to resistance members, the main characters include an American SS official, and Japanese inspector. Some characters could be written as evil but are truly human. Similarly, the “heroes” of the story are neither perfect nor certain in their resistance. A viewer’s reaction might be “How could you live in this dystopia without rebelling” but we must remember that people did live under Nazi rule without resistance.   Nazism is perhaps the most cited historical dystopia 1 , and I’d like to addres...