See also Psalms 55, where the psalmist wishes he could fly away from his troubles like a dove, just as Jonah attempted to "fly" away from his troubles:
4 My heart is in anguish within me, And the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
5 Fear and trembling come upon me,
And horror has overwhelmed me.
6 I said, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest.
7"Behold, I would wander far away,
I would lodge in the wilderness."
Compare this to Jonah in The Giver, who also runs away from his community at the end of the novel.
A little deeper:
The Biblical Jonah did not want to deliver God's message to the people of Nineveh, so he ran away, was swallowed by a whale, etc., Why didn't he want to deliver God's message?
There is a Jewish tradition as follows. The people of Nineveh were not Jewish; Jonah, as stated clearly in the text, was a Hebrew (Jew).
The Jews at that time had drifted quite afar from God's laws; they had been rebuked by many prophets, but had failed to mend their ways.
Now, Jonah had an intuition that the people of Nineveh would quickly repent from their evil ways if they received a message from a prophet of God to do so. Jonah was afraid that if this happened, the Jews would look bad. So, he attempted to run away and avoid the whole issue.
In effect, Jonah was sympathetic to the people of his community, but was pained by their hypocrisy. So, he ran away.
Remind you of someone in The Giver?
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