In the following extract from The Giver, Jonas is talking about the concept of love. Comment on how the author, Lois Lowry, colours the situation and creates tension and insecurity by using carefully chosen words.
• Write a couple of paragraphs
Jonas nodded. “I like the feeling of love,” he confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. “I wish we still had that,” he whispered. “Of course, “he added quickly, “I do understand that it wouldn’t work very well. And that it’s much better to be organised the way we are now, I can see that it was a dangerous way to live.”
“Father? Mother?” Jonas asked tentatively after the evening meal. “I have a question I want to ask you.”
“What is it, Jonas?” his father asked.
He made himself say the words, though he felt flushed with embarrassment. He had rehearsed them in his mind all the way home from the Annex.
“Do you love me?”
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then his father gave a little chuckle. “Jonas. You of all people. Precision of language, please!”
“What do you mean?” Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
“Your father means that you used a very generalised word, so meaningless that it’s almost obsolete,” his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
“And of course our community can’t function smoothly if people don’t use precise language. You could ask, ‘Do you enjoy me?’ The answer is ‘Yes,’” his mother said.
“Or,” his father suggested, “Do you take pride in my accomplishments? And the answer is wholeheartedly ‘Yes.’”
“Do you understand why it’s inappropriate to use a word like ‘love’?” Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. “Yes, thank you, I do,” he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents.

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