The Declaration (6)

Both her parents put their hands to their mouths, and looked like they were eating something, and then her mother smiled, like she was laughing, like she'd just been given something she'd wanted all her life. And she turned to the Catcher, and she said, 'You can't touch them now,' and he frowned, and then her mother stumbled slightly, and she fell to the ground, followed by Anna's father. But they were both smiling, and their hands found each other. 'Anna,' her father said. 'Anna, you're free. You and Ben are free. A life for a life. It's in the Declaration. We've been waiting for this moment. Wanting it to come. Waiting to give you life again. A real life. A real future. We're so sorry, Anna. So sorry...' (pg. 291)

Anna struggled and suffered because of all the lies that Mrs. Pincent filled her mind with. She was told that her parents never loved her and that she was a waste of space. The government used their corrupt methods to manipulate and gain control over the people in the society. Anna was one of many that were under their control. Everything she did was for the sake of the government because she accepted the fact that she was a Surplus and her parents’ mistake. She cleaned for the Legals because they were thought to have a higher value than the rest of the people in the world. The government took complete control of the life of Anna. They kept her in Grange Hall to keep an eye on her and they never let her on the Outside because they feared she would absorb different ideas. Like Mrs. Pincent said in the novel, “Anna doesn’t have a mind of her own”. She was easily manipulated until Peter came to the hall and shared his view on society. He told her that she had a valuable life and that her parents loved her.

The moment Anna’s parents swallowed the pill to end their life, Anna’s life was saved from all the corruption of the government. She was no longer a puppet; she had a mind of her own and could make her own decisions. The author creates a world in which the people are conformists and must hate on the same group of people and praise the same group of people. Anna searches for a way out of this world and into a life filled with freedom and happiness. A world where every behavior and thought is the same is a dystopian world. Conformity only allows one person to take charge of the rest of the world. One leader leads to dictatorship and dictatorship leads to destruction. Hitler was a dictator who manipulated the Germans to follow every move he wishes to make. History can tell us that his rule did not result in a positive manner. A certain group of people (like Surpluses) were targeted and ignored, which led to the Holocaust and the extermination of millions of Jews.