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charlie_ego February 7 2011, 03:35:25 UTC
Interesting. I've read both and I didn't think at all that they were similar (besides both being dystopia everything-is-controlled-blah-blah, but, I mean, any dystopia with total control is going to be like that, really, right?) -- I guess looking at your post a lot of the names are the same (I read Giver a long enough time ago that the similarity of the names didn't occur to me), but I feel they're used rather differently (e.g., the pills -- in Giver they're an everyday thing for repressing emotions, but in Matched they manage to do the emotion repressing mainly through social pressure and need pills only rarely). It wouldn't even have struck me to compare the two except as common examples of dystopia. Perhaps it makes a difference that I wasn't a huge fan of The Giver, finding it a little too preachy and one-dimensional for me -- IIRC there's no possible way of approving of the world in the Giver, which kind of turns me off.

What Matched did remind me of was Brave New World, except that I think BNW is a much better book, not least because although it's an incredibly horrifying world, it's so by our standards -- though some of its inhabitants find it horrifying, some of them find our world horrifying.

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charlie_ego February 7 2011, 03:46:09 UTC
Sorry about the terribly written comment above; I'm a little short on sleep. Here's an example where I feel like Matched could have gone a little deeper but didn't: at some point Cassia and the government official have a tiff about why the government regulates romance/marriage. The official says something like, "If we let people do that then eventually they'd want to choose, like, whether to have children!" Which is, of course, a ridiculous argument. The right argument is, "When people get to choose who they marry there's a 50% divorce rate, and you don't see that in our society, do you?" I felt like the book was sort of groping towards being the book I wanted to read (the one where Cassia really has to struggle with questions like, is it really better to have choice if it comes at the expense of a 50% divorce rate? Would she be willing to make that choice with that kind of risk?), but never quite got there.

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calico_reaction February 7 2011, 04:04:32 UTC
No worries. I'm responding to these comments and I'm a wee bit intoxicated, so god only knows how sensical I am right now!

See, I think one could create an interesting dystopia based on the battle against failed marriages. That said, I'm not sure how accurately the officials could've used a divorce rate from our time, because they seem so far removed from our time, you know? And would someone like Cassia even understand what a 50% divorce rate even means?

But you're right in that THAT was the direction they should've gone towards: a dystopia where family and marriage is highly regulated and there's a reason why. I was quite surprised when I discovered there were other dystopian elements (restricted reading, no creative pursuits, curfews, etc) and I thought that added to the book. That said, I still think you're on the right track. :)

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charlie_ego February 7 2011, 22:09:20 UTC
Yes! THAT is it, exactly, that's the book I wanted to read, something where they had compelling reasons (or, at least, reasons that made sense) for highly regulating marriage, and more generally some sort of interesting discussion about freedom vs. happiness -- would you take happiness if it came at the expense of freedom? Would you choose freedom if you knew it came with a greatly reduced risk of happiness? In Brave New World, most of the people are totally cool with happiness at the expense of freedom and think people who think otherwise are idiots, whereas John (and a couple of others IIRC) are the opposite.

Okay, yeah, Cassia wouldn't've understood "50% divorce rate," but I bet it could have been presented in a way that she would have understood it. ("In ancient times, when people chose their own mates, half of them later realized they had chosen wrongly, at great personal and societal cost.")

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calico_reaction February 7 2011, 22:51:18 UTC
Oh yeah, there would've been ways to make Cassia understand. :)

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calico_reaction February 7 2011, 04:01:35 UTC
The readers who first brought up the comparison between these two books (Giver and Matched) absolutely LOVED The Giver, so I can see how they would be more defensive of the book. :) But if you didn't like it, I can see why the similarities are less startling.

Ah, Brave New World... Now that's a book I need to re-read!

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