The Giver

The Giver. ISBN: 0-440-23768-8. Lois Lowry. 1993. Newberry Honor. 12 and up. Classless, race less Utopian society.

Synopsis

The Giver is the story of Jonas a boy who is growing up in what seems to be the perfect civilization - a world free from choices, hardships and feelings. Jonas seems different from others early in the novel, but it is not until he receives his assignment at the age of twelve that he truly learns how to be different.

He is assigned to be the Receiver of Memories where he will undergo a very isolated training. It is in this training that the current Receiver (who Jonas begins calling The Giver) teaches Jonas of memories that his supposed "perfect" community cannot begin to comprehend. Through learning about emotions like pleasure and pain, Jonas realizes that his community is missing out on many things and he begins to question the way things work. He truly sees how wrong his society is when he witnesses the release of a newchild. The release is actually a sort of lethal injection.

Jonas decides he cannot live in a society that has no regard for human life. After he hears that the newchild Gabriel that has been living with his family is to be "released" he immediately acts by taking the newchild away on his fathers bike. When these two venture out into "Elsewhere" Jonas truly begins to live some of the memories that The Giver had given to him. He begins to see that there are upsides and downsides to both the safety and confinement of his community and the beauty and pleasure of Elsewhere.

Topics for Discussion
1. Free will
2. Right vs. wrong
3. Emotions
4. What makes us human
Critique
Lowry does an amazing job with setting in this story. The setting is one of the most important aspects of this novel. The community that Jonas lives in is fictional and entirely different from the world we have grown accustomed to living in. It is quite interesting that most of the characters in this novel believe that they are living in an ideal way, when the reader could interpret their way of life as absolutely horrifying.

It is equally interesting that our true world can be looked at as a terrible place with many atrocities and injustices occurring on a regular basis, but Jonas the main character would rather live in this atrocious world and be given the ability to feel feelings and be able to have free will that not. The things that we find horrible in our own reality are perceived as truly living by Jonas. I find this idea very fascinating and believe that it would bring about a wealth of valuable discussion in the classroom.