By: Arlen Williams
Gulag Bound

It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning
to be frightened.

And so the story beings. Written two decades ago, it has been called the first dystopian novel for youths, something notable to Gulag Bound. While it was still fresh on the scene, Jeff Bridges began seeking to make a movie of it, at first hoping his father Lloyd could play its elder lead. Sixteen years later he received that role, himself.

GiverCharacterMap

It is almost December and now the film may be seen in the solitude of home; and as it happens, the story has something of a Christmas theme. Call it Christmastide in one dream of a post-Agenda 21 world. Is such a thing “sustainable?”

In this instance, the author of the book, Lois Lowry, recommends the movie. I confess seeing more movies end-to-end than reading books that way, especially since the alarms of our very dystopically prone 2008. Books are great for taking in nearly the full set of meanings and contexts intended by an author full of thoughts. Movies take less time to tell the story, while resting the intention-juggling concentrator of one’s mind.

A well made film may focus on the main things and despite its relatively fast pace, furnish space for the viewer’s filling-in of his own first and second impressions.

Main things I was very pleased to find this movie zeroing-in upon are four observations I’ve been grateful to gain over the years, about collectivist, statist, elitist engineered, and perversely labeled “progressive” societies:

  • they lie, even against nature itself, especially human nature
  • they steal, possessions and freedom, and where they may…
  • they coerce, even to extort one’s due role of who He is under God
  • inevitably, in one way or various others, they murder.

And here we are, almost December of 2014 and how many are coming to understand?


To understand adequately we must receive what is given from the greatest, outside of us, outside what many would allow.

Suggested.