The Giver

Title: The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Publication City: New York, New York
Publication date: 1993
ISBN: 0-395-64566-2

Summary

Jonas is almost 12, and it is almost December, and Jonas is frightened. In December all the 12-year-olds receive their life assignment from the Elders at the Ceremony. The life assignment will determine what Jonas will do for the rest of his life until he becomes a member of the Old in the House of the Old. Other Elevens in his community have an idea of what they want to do and whet the Elders will choose for them, but Jonas has no clue. The community where he lives in marked by orderly perfection. There is no backtalk from children, people share their feelings and their dreams everyday, and everything is black and white. Anything or anyone gray is simply released.

When the day arrives for The Ceremony Jonas watches as his friends receive assignments that fit their personalities, and himself get skipped over in the list. For this orderly community, the skip over is a big deal and Jonas frantically wonders what he did wrong. But things are smoothed over when it is revealed that Jonas has been given the special job of Receiver.

When Jonas shows up for training as the Receiver he only knows a few things: he cannot discuss his training with anyone, he can lie, and it will be painful. When he meets the Receiver he is to replace the old man without a name tells Jonas to call him the Giver. As Jonas learns, the Receiver is the holder of all of the memories of the past. It is the job of the Giver to transmit all the memories to Jonas. Soon Jonas learns what snow is and the feeling of riding down a hill on a sled. He learns the word love and the meaning behind it. But he also learns of war, death, and what it truly means to be released. After learning the truth of release Jonas decides something has to be done to show the people of his perfected community what the past was like.

Review

A world of perfection, a Utopian society, sounds wonderful, but when it actually exists problems begin to emerge. In a world of perfection there is no feelings, even though they are discussed each day. In a world of perfection only 50 children are born each year, they all get their parents the same day, and they all turn two on the same day. In a world of perfection everything is black and white because colors are not the same, and differences do not lead to perfection. In a world of perfection you get no choices because the Elders make the big life choices, and when you get older maybe you can be an Elder and make the decisions for other people. In a world of perfection you do not die; you are simply released to live "elsewhere."

Lois Lowry does an outstanding job of making a world of perfection sound wonderful one minute, and absolutely terrifying the next. As Jonas discovers what colors are, what feelings are, and what death means, he realizes the life he lives is not perfection, but seriously flawed. Teens will identify with Jonas' dilemma about keeping the feelings and memories to himself and how to make adults believe they perfect world that has been created is, in fact, far from perfect. Children and teens are use to authority looking down on them because they are younger.

Lowry examines the area of release & death, love, and "sameness" without a lecture hammering a person over the head. The Giver gives students, and adults, something to think about, and in a novel that is a wonderful thing.

Professional Reviews

Amazon.com
In a world with no poverty, no crime, no sickness and no unemployment, and where every family is happy, 12-year-old Jonas is chosen to be the community's Receiver of Memories. Under the tutelage of the Elders and an old man known as the Giver, he discovers the disturbing truth about his Utopian world and struggles against the weight of its hypocrisy. With echoes of Brave New World, in this 1994 Newbery Medal winner, Lowry examines the idea that people might freely choose to give up their humanity in order to create a more stable society. Gradually Jonas learns just how costly this ordered and pain-free society can be, and boldly decides he cannot pay the price. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
In the "ideal" world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are "released"--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also "released," but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers. Ages 12-14.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Connections

1. Define "Utopia" and design your own Utopian society complete with map and rules. Present it to the class.

2. Could you live in a society like Jonas'? Why do you think it worked? Look at the book closely, can you see cracks in the way the community worked?

3. Get in "family groups" and discuss your feelings about the book. Web your feelings about release, jobs, the age levels, and sameness. Then discuss with the class how you feel about those categories.