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The Giver 這本書，志在必行早在10年前就看過了，但當時心不定沒辨法一口氣讀完;但看到本班同學claire 拿著這本書，才勾起志在必行的記憶。志在必行記得看這本書時是躲在百貨公司的按摩椅後面看的。那時在美國打工- 做銷貨員，沒事時，就躲著椅後翻翻書看。前面的故事志在必行是看的很仔細，但在後面的情節是挑著跳著看。志在必行第一次看原文的奇幻文學就是這本由一位美國小學老師送的(他是一位教語言的博士, 當時他追求志在必行，要志在必行好好唸書。但是志在必行並不喜歡他的外在，所以拒絕了他) <此時，意識流在我書寫這段時打斷我的上個思緒了> 沉浸於奇幻世界裡是很不切實際但精神面/創造面卻得到了滿足。也許因為志在必行太愛幻想了 !! 現實對志在必行而言，有時還不太能適應，志在必行的心智狀態常常是處在超現實上。看後心得: The Giver / 怎麼能夠主宰/決定一個社區所有人的未來呢?? 還好上帝給我們的是自由意識，讓我們自已選擇，我們的生命因自由選擇一切得著意義。若只為社區安逸著想而控管所有生命体的自由意識，那有什麼意思呢?? 這本是青少年所看的，可以幫助青少年思考人可以自由選擇- 真棒 !!
1994年美國作家路薏絲．蘿莉(Lois Lowry) 曾出版《記憶受領員》(The Giver)一書，這本以一位12歲男童為主角、敘述一個充滿人性矛盾與掙扎的烏托邦社會的幻想小說，在94年曾獲得全美兒童文學重要大獎－紐伯瑞金牌獎 (The Newberry Medal)。然而，近日媒體報導，這兩年隨著這本書進入中小學圖書館、或成為基礎教育教材，卻在美國社會引起了廣泛的爭議與迴響。
在《記憶受領員》一書中，作者蘿莉透過豐富的想像力，創出一個令人寒心、人人都被緊緊控制的「未來烏托邦社會」。在這個看似祥和的社會中，人人壯有所用、老有所終，自然而然地進入「命定」的工作崗位，一切的爭議、痛苦，以及選擇，都不存在。每個人在童年時期都享有個人的特權和未來應盡的責任，而家庭成員也在精選後具有高度的一致性。
書中敘述早慧的男童喬納斯(Jonas)，在他即將進入「12歲成年禮」的前夕，卻發現了自己成人後將「被分派的任務」(assignment)－成為「記憶受領員」(Receiver)，並展開一場掙扎與逃亡的過程。
喬納斯的父親，是一位撫育員，負責照顧新生兒，他的母親在司法部工作，然而，喬納斯被公認的天份並沒有為他帶來一般的工作。他「命定」要成為「記憶受領員」，將取代一位長者的獨特任務：把持整個社會成員的「記憶」──所有痛苦的、煩惱的，或者可能導致社會失序的記憶。這位將成為「記憶施與員」(The Giver)的長者，則已經開始將這些記憶移轉給喬納斯。
這個過程深深地困擾著喬納斯。這是他生平第一次接觸到一些普通的事物，像是顏色、太陽、雪和山川，以及愛、戰爭和死亡──在喬納斯看來，這個被視為「解放」的儀式，卻透露出這個烏托邦社會不為人知的謀殺本質。
驚懼之餘，喬納斯開始秘密策劃一場「逃離烏托邦」的計畫，他相信自己可以將記憶還給所有的人，但是他的計畫卻在他決定釋放記憶給一個新生嬰兒時給打亂了，原因是他愛上了這個新生的小生命。
由於不忍和幾經掙扎，在沒有裝備的情況下，喬納斯遂帶著這個小嬰兒展開了一場鋌而走險的亡命之旅…
根據美聯社報導，《記憶受領員》在美國出版幾年後，已逐漸進入各中小學校園圖書館，和成為小學課堂上的教材，但是書中觸及的「自殺」問題，卻成為各方爭議的焦點。包括南卡羅來納、弗羅里達、德州、俄亥俄州和科羅拉多州，都有正反雙方不同立場的意見，為這本書是否挑戰學校教育、以及是否適合兒童閱讀而相持不下。
反對者批評，這本書最大的錯誤在於沒有清楚解釋「自殺」並非解決人生問題的方法。住在丹佛市的漢森就爭論小學老師在他11歲女兒的課堂上大聲朗讀這本書是危險的，因為書中對自殺、安樂死和殺嬰等問題，以一種中性偏正面的角度來描寫。
贊成者則認為，這個12歲男孩的故事可以刺激學生思考一些重要的社會難題和讓學生表達自己的意見。他們表示，這個在看到人們為了生活在一個沒有戰爭和痛苦的世界而付出的代價後，最後做出逃離決定的故事，可以激發學生思考一些問題。
「如果我們只是要等待每個孩子都準備好了（才談這些問題），我們將活在一個和喬納斯相同的世界，」南卡羅來納州政府機構－校園人文藝術圖書館主任史卡爾說。
此外，有一些團體如美國國家家長及教師協會(National Parent-Teacher Association)及國家中小學校長協會(National Association of Elementary School Principals)，面對這些爭議則表示將不採取任何立場。本書於1995年由智茂文化推出中譯本。
如果你是喬納斯，可以生活在一個沒有爭議、只有和諧，沒有苦痛、只有喜樂，人人沒有煩惱、一切井然有序的烏托邦社會，而享受所有特權的代價，只是在「12歲的成年禮後」，你必須了解真相，接手壟斷社會中不愉快記憶、避免社會解組的責任，你願意嗎？而生活在和善社會中的孩子們，又是否可以討論這樣的問題呢？(2001/7/6,博客來)
Context
Lois lowry was born in 1937 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Because her father was in the army, Lowry moved around as a child. She lived in several different countries, including Japan. She attended Brown University, where she was a writing major, but left college before graduation to get married. Lowry’s marriage did not last, but she had four children who became a major inspiration for her work. She finished her college degree at the University of Maine and worked as a housekeeper to earn a living. She continued to write, however, filled with ideas by the adventures of her children. In addition to working on young adult novels, Lowry also wrote textbooks and worked as a photographer specializing in children’s portraits.
For her first novel, A Summer to Die, Lowry received the International Reading Association Children’s Book Award in 1978. The novel tells the story of a thirteen-year-old girl’s complex feelings toward her older sister, who is dying. Lowry has said that she does not like to include directly autobiographical information in her books, but it is possible that some of Lowry’s experience seeped into A Summer to Die, as Lowry’s own sister died of cancer.
Since then, Lowry has written more than twenty books for young adults, including the popular Anastasia series and Number the Stars, which won the Newbery Medal and the National Jewish Book Award in 1990. She was inspired to write The Giver—which won the 1994 Newbery medal—after visiting her elderly father in a nursing home. He had lost most of his long-term memory, and it occurred to Lowry that without memory there is no longer any pain. She imagined a society where the past was deliberately forgotten, which would allow the inhabitants to live in a kind of peaceful ignorance. The flaws inherent in such a society, she realized, would show the value of individual and community memory: although a loss of memory might mean a loss of pain, it also means a loss of lasting human relationships and connections with the past.
The society Lowry depicts in The Giver is a utopian society—a perfect world as envisioned by its creators. It has eliminated fear, pain, hunger, illness, conflict, and hatred—all things that most of us would like to eliminate in our own society. But in order to maintain the peace and order of their society, the citizens of the community in The Giver have to submit to strict rules governing their behavior, their relationships, and even their language. Individual freedom and human passions add a chaotic element to society, and in The Giver even the memory of freedom and passion, along with the pain and conflict that human choice and emotion often cause, must be suppressed. In effect, the inhabitants of the society, though they are happy and peaceful, also lack the basic freedoms and pleasures that our own society values.
In this way, The Giver is part of the tradition of dystopian novels written in English, including George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In these novels, societies that might seem to be perfect because all the inhabitants are well fed or healthy or seemingly happy are revealed to be profoundly flawed because they limit the intellectual or emotional freedom of the individual. 1984 and Brave New World both feature characters who awaken to the richness of experience possible outside the confines of the society, but they are either destroyed by the society or reassimilated before they can make any significant changes. The books function as warnings to the reader: do not let this happen to your society.
The message of The Giver is slightly more optimistic: by the end of the novel, we believe that Jonas has taken a major step toward awakening his community to the rich possibilities of life. The novel is also slightly less realistic: although the technological advances that allow the community to function are scientifically feasible, the relationship between Jonas and the Giver has magical overtones. But Lowry’s dystopian society shares many aspects with those of 1984 and Brave New World: the dissolution of close family connections and loyalty; the regulation or repression of sexuality; the regulation of careers, marriages, and reproduction; the subjugation of the individual to the community; and constant government monitoring of individual behavior.
The Giver was published in 1993, a time when public consciousness of political correctness was at a peak, and this historical context is interestingly echoed in some aspects of the society that Lowry portrays. One of the most prominent debates surrounding political correctness was—and is—the value of celebrating differences between people versus the value of making everyone in a society feel that they belong. The society in The Giver’s emphasis on “Sameness” can be seen as a critique of the politically correct tendency to ignore significant differences between individuals in order to avoid seeming prejudiced or discriminatory. At the same time, the society refuses to tolerate major differences between individuals at all: people who cannot be easily assimilated into the society are released. Lowry suggests that while tolerance is essential, it should never be achieved at the expense of true diversity.
In The Giver, Lowry tackles other issues that emerged as significant social questions in the early 1990s. The anti-abortion versus pro-life controversy raged hotly, and new questions arose concerning the ethics of a family’s right to choose to end the life of a terminally ill family member (euthanasia) and an individual’s right to end his or her own life (assisted suicide). Questions about reproductive rights and the nature of the family unit also arose due to advances in genetic and reproductive technology. Books such as Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village and increased press coverage of single parents, extended families, gay parents, and community child-rearing raised complex questions about the forms families could take and the ways they could work.
Lowry’s willingness to take on these issues in The Giver, as well as her insistence on treating all aspects of life in the community, has made The Giver one of the most frequently censored books in school libraries and curricula. Some parents are upset by the novel’s depictions of sexuality and violence, and feel that their middle-school and high-school aged children are unprepared to deal with issues like euthanasia and suicide. Ironically, their desire to protect their children from these realities is not dissimilar to the novel’s community’s attempts to keep its citizens ignorant about—and safe from—sex, violence, and pain, both physical and psychological.
Plot Overview
The giver is written from the point of view of Jonas, an eleven-year-old boy living in a futuristic society that has eliminated all pain, fear, war, and hatred. There is no prejudice, since everyone looks and acts basically the same, and there is very little competition. Everyone is unfailingly polite. The society has also eliminated choice: at age twelve every member of the community is assigned a job based on his or her abilities and interests. Citizens can apply for and be assigned compatible spouses, and each couple is assigned exactly two children each. The children are born to Birthmothers, who never see them, and spend their first year in a Nurturing Center with other babies, or “newchildren,” born that year. When their children are grown, family units dissolve and adults live together with Childless Adults until they are too old to function in the society. Then they spend their last years being cared for in the House of the Old until they are finally “released” from the society. In the community, release is death, but it is never described that way; most people think that after release, flawed newchildren and joyful elderly people are welcomed into the vast expanse of Elsewhere that surrounds the communities. Citizens who break rules or fail to adapt properly to the society’s codes of behavior are also released, though in their cases it is an occasion of great shame. Everything is planned and organized so that life is as convenient and pleasant as possible.
Jonas lives with his father, a Nurturer of new children, his mother, who works at the Department of Justice, and his seven-year-old sister Lily. At the beginning of the novel, he is apprehensive about the upcoming Ceremony of Twelve, when he will be given his official Assignment as a new adult member of the community. He does not have a distinct career preference, although he enjoys volunteering at a variety of different jobs. Though he is a well-behaved citizen and a good student, Jonas is different: he has pale eyes, while most people in his community have dark eyes, and he has unusual powers of perception. Sometimes objects “change” when he looks at them. He does not know it yet, but he alone in his community can perceive flashes of color; for everyone else, the world is as devoid of color as it is of pain, hunger, and inconvenience.
At the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas is given the highly honored Assignment of Receiver of Memory. The Receiver is the sole keeper of the community’s collective memory. When the community went over to Sameness—its painless, warless, and mostly emotionless state of tranquility and harmony—it abandoned all memories of pain, war, and emotion, but the memories cannot disappear totally. Someone must keep them so that the community can avoid making the mistakes of the past, even though no one but the Receiver can bear the pain. Jonas receives the memories of the past, good and bad, from the current Receiver, a wise old man who tells Jonas to call him the Giver.
The Giver transmits memories by placing his hands on Jonas’s bare back. The first memory he receives is of an exhilarating sled ride. As Jonas receives memories from the Giver—memories of pleasure and pain, of bright colors and extreme cold and warm sun, of excitement and terror and hunger and love—he realizes how bland and empty life in his community really is. The memories make Jonas’s life richer and more meaningful, and he wishes that he could give that richness and meaning to the people he loves. But in exchange for their peaceful existence, the people of Jonas’s community have lost the capacity to love him back or to feel deep passion about anything. Since they have never experienced real suffering, they also cannot appreciate the real joy of life, and the life of individual people seems less precious to them. In addition, no one in Jonas’s community has ever made a choice of his or her own. Jonas grows more and more frustrated with the members of his community, and the Giver, who has felt the same way for many years, encourages him. The two grow very close, like a grandfather and a grandchild might have in the days before Sameness, when family members stayed in contact long after their children were grown.
Meanwhile, Jonas is helping his family take care of a problem newchild, Gabriel, who has trouble sleeping through the night at the Nurturing Center. Jonas helps the child to sleep by transmitting soothing memories to him every night, and he begins to develop a relationship with Gabriel that mirrors the family relationships he has experienced through the memories. When Gabriel is in danger of being released, the Giver reveals to Jonas that release is the same as death. Jonas’s rage and horror at this revelation inspire the Giver to help Jonas devise a plan to change things in the community forever. The Giver tells Jonas about the girl who had been designated the new Receiver ten years before. She had been the Giver’s own daughter, but the sadness of some of the memories had been too much for her and she had asked to be released. When she died, all of the memories she had accumulated were released into the community, and the community members could not handle the sudden influx of emotion and sensation. The Giver and Jonas plan for Jonas to escape the community and to actually enter Elsewhere. Once he has done that, his larger supply of memories will disperse, and the Giver will help the community to come to terms with the new feelings and thoughts, changing the society forever.
However, Jonas is forced to leave earlier than planned when his father tells him that Gabriel will be released the next day. Desperate to save Gabriel, Jonas steals his father’s bicycle and a supply of food and sets off for Elsewhere. Gradually, he enters a landscape full of color, animals, and changing weather, but also hunger, danger, and exhaustion. Avoiding search planes, Jonas and Gabriel travel for a long time until heavy snow makes bike travel impossible. Half-frozen, but comforting Gabriel with memories of sunshine and friendship, Jonas mounts a high hill. There he finds a sled—the sled from his first transmitted memory—waiting for him at the top. Jonas and Gabriel experience a glorious downhill ride on the sled. Ahead of them, they see—or think they see—the twinkling lights of a friendly village at Christmas, and they hear music. Jonas is sure that someone is waiting for them there.
Character List
Jonas - The eleven-year-old protagonist of The Giver. Sensitive and intelligent, with strange powers of perception that he doesn’t understand, Jonas is chosen to be the new Receiver of Memory for his community when he turns twelve. Even before his training, Jonas is unusually thoughtful, expresses great concern for his friends and family, and thinks it would be nice to be closer to other people. After his training begins, Jonas’s universe widens dramatically. His new awareness of strong emotions, beautiful colors, and great suffering makes him extremely passionate about the world around him and the welfare of the people he loves, though on the whole he remains level-headed and thoughtful.
The Giver - The old man known in the community as the Receiver of Memory. The Giver has held the community’s collective memory for many years and uses his wisdom to help the Committee of Elders make important decisions, even though he is racked by the pain his memories give him and believes that perhaps those memories belong in the minds of everyone in the community.
Jonas’s father - A mild-mannered, tenderhearted Nurturer who works with infants. He is very sweet with his two children. He enjoys his job and takes it very seriously, constantly trying to nurture children who will stay alive until the Ceremony of Names. However, even if he is attached to a child, he will release it if that seems to be the best decision. He has an affectionate, playful relationship with his two children, usually referring to them by silly nicknames, and he likes playing childish games with the children he nurtures.
Jonas’s mother - A practical, pleasant woman with an important position at the Department of Justice. Jonas’s mother takes her work seriously, hoping to help people who break rules see the error of their ways. She frequently gives Jonas advice about the worries and fears he faces as he grows up.
Lily - Jonas’s seven-year-old sister. She is a chatterbox and does not know quite when to keep her mouth shut, but she is also extremely practical and well-informed for a little girl.
Gabriel - The newchild that Jonas’s family cares for at night. He is sweet and adorable during the day, but has trouble sleeping at night unless Jonas puts him to sleep with some memories. He and Jonas become very close.
Asher - Jonas’s best friend. Asher is a fun-loving, hasty boy who usually speaks too fast, mixing up his words to the exasperation of his teachers and Jonas. He is assigned the position of Assistant Director of Recreation.
Fiona - Another of Jonas’s friends. She has red hair, which only Jonas can see, and works as a Caretaker in the House of the Old. She is mild-mannered and patient. Jonas’s first sexual stirrings come in the form of an erotic dream about Fiona.
Larissa - A woman living in the House of the Old. Jonas shares pleasant conversation with her while he gives her a bath during his volunteer hours. Like many inhabitants of the House of the Old, she enjoys gossip and looks forward to her release.
The Chief Elder - The elected leader of Jonas’s community. She to shows genuine affection for all of the children at the Ceremony of Twelve, knowing of their names and an anecdote about each one.
Analysis of Major Characters
Jonas
On the surface, Jonas is like any other eleven-year-old boy living in his community. He seems more intelligent and perceptive than many of his peers, and he thinks more seriously than they do about life, worrying about his own future as well as his friend Asher’s. He enjoys learning and experiencing new things: he chooses to volunteer at a variety of different centers rather than focusing on one, because he enjoys the freedom of choice that volunteer hours provide. He also enjoys learning about and connecting with other people, and he craves more warmth and human contact than his society permits or encourages. The things that really set him apart from his peers—his unusual eyes, his ability to see things change in a way that he cannot explain—trouble him, but he does not let them bother him too much, since the community’s emphasis on politeness makes it easy for Jonas to conceal or ignore these little differences. Like any child in the community, Jonas is uncomfortable with the attention he receives when he is singled out as the new Receiver, preferring to blend in with his friends.
Once Jonas begins his training with the Giver, however, the tendencies he showed in his earlier life—his sensitivity, his heightened perceptual powers, his kindness to and interest in people, his curiosity about new experiences, his honesty, and his high intelligence—make him extremely absorbed in the memories the Giver has to transmit. In turn, the memories, with their rich sensory and emotional experiences, enhance all of Jonas’s unusual qualities. Within a year of training, he becomes extremely sensitive to beauty, pleasure, and suffering, deeply loving toward his family and the Giver, and fiercely passionate about his new beliefs and feelings. Things about the community that used to be mildly perplexing or troubling are now intensely frustrating or depressing, and Jonas’s inherent concern for others and desire for justice makes him yearn to make changes in the community, both to awaken other people to the richness of life and to stop the casual cruelty that is practiced in the community. Jonas is also very determined, committing to a task fully when he believes in it and willing to risk his own life for the sake of the people he loves.
Although as a result of his training Jonas possesses more wisdom than almost anyone else in his community, he is still very young and knows little about life in the community itself. At twelve years old, Jonas is too young to control the powerful emotions that his training unleashes, and the natural hormonal imbalances of preadolesnce make him especially passionate and occasionally unreasonable. Of course, his youth makes it possible for him to receive the memories and learn from them—if he were older, he might be less receptive to new experiences and emotions—but he needs the guidance and wisdom of the Giver, who has life experience as well as memories, to help him keep all of his new experiences in perspective.
The Giver
Like Jonas, who is a young person with the wisdom of an old person, the Giver is a bit of a paradox. He looks ancient, but he is not old at all. Like someone who has seen and done many things over many years, he is very wise and world-weary, and he is haunted by memories of suffering and pain, but in reality his life has been surprisingly uneventful. In the world of the community, the Giver has spent most of his life inside his comfortable living quarters, eating his meals and emerging occasionally to take long walks. Yet he carries the memories of an entire community, so he feels like a man who has done more in his life than anyone else in the world: he has experienced the positive and negative emotions, desires, triumphs, and failures of millions of men and women, as well as animals. He is responsible for preserving those memories and using the wisdom they give him to make decisions for the community. Anyone would feel weighted down by this enormous responsibility, and because the Giver is forbidden to share his knowledge and pain with anyone else, including his spouse and his children, the weight is more difficult to bear. Thus, the Giver has become an exceptionally patient, quiet, deliberate person, growing resigned to the fact that he cannot change the community even though he realizes that it needs to be changed. He endures his loneliness and frustration as well as the increasing physical pain that the memories bring him with a quiet calm that makes him a rather stoic figure. His patience, wisdom, and restraint make him an excellent teacher and mentor.
However, the memories that the Giver carries inside him are too powerful for him to be entirely stoic: he still feels strong emotions, and under the right circumstances they surge to the surface. Among the members of the community, the Giver alone is capable of real love, an emotion he experiences with Rosemary, the first child who was designated to be the Receiver. Years of loneliness, isolation, and unshared emotion made the Giver’s love for Rosemary intense, even by the standards of the time before Sameness, and when she is taken from him, his anger and grief are equally intense. It is this anger and grief, fueled by the Giver’s growing love for Jonas and Jonas’s own youthful energy, that allow the Giver to finally overturn his years of silence and endurance and change the community. The decision is also influenced by the Giver’s aptitude as a teacher and advisor: it is natural for him to want to help the community learn to handle the memories, as he has helped Rosemary and Jonas.
Jonas’s Father
Jonas’s father is one of the only characters in the novel, besides the Giver and Jonas, who seems to grapple with difficult decisions and complex emotions. Although Jonas’s father does not have access to the memories that give Jonas and the Giver insight into human relationships and feelings, he displays many of the characteristics that were valued in pre-Sameness societies. As a Nurturer, he feels a strong connection with the babies he cares for and a deep concern for their welfare. Although he agrees with Jonas’s mother that “love” is a meaningless, obscure word, the feelings he displays toward the newchildren and his family seem very much like love: he delights in taking care of them and playing with them, he worries about them, and he makes minor and major sacrifices for their benefit, from indulging his daughter’s fondness for her comfort object to bringing baby Gabriel home to his family every night in the hopes of saving him from being released. His concern for the newchildren might be concern about his own personal failure as a Nurturer, but he obviously feels pain and regret when children are released. He also has an independent streak that is unusual in the community, demonstrated when he breaks a rule and peeks at Gabriel’s name in the hopes that it will help the child.
In the end, however, Jonas’s father is a product of his society. Under other circumstances, he probably would have loved the newchildren passionately and fought against all odds for their survival. But having grown up in a society where release, though an occasion for sadness, is not considered tragedy, Jonas’s father cannot access the deeper feelings that might be available to him. He regrets the release of newchildren, but he performs releases himself: not knowing the value of life as Jonas does, he cannot appreciate its loss, and never having felt intense pain, he cannot summon it for the death of a baby.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Importance of Memory
One of the most important themes in The Giver is the significance of memory to human life. Lowry was inspired to write The Giver after a visit to her aging father, who had lost most of his long-term memory. She realized that without memory, there is no pain—if you cannot remember physical pain, you might as well not have experienced it, and you cannot be plagued by regret or grief if you cannot remember the events that hurt you. At some point in the past the community in The Giver decided to eliminate all pain from their lives. To do so, they had to give up the memories of their society’s collective experiences. Not only did this allow them to forget all of the pain that had been suffered throughout human history, it also prevented members of the society from wanting to engage in activities and relationships that could result in conflict and suffering, and eliminated any nostalgia for the things the community gave up in order to live in total peace and harmony. According to the novel, however, memory is essential. The Committee of Elders does recognize the practical applications of memory—if you do not remember your errors, you may repeat them—so it designates a Receiver to remember history for the community. But as Jonas undergoes his training, he learns that just as there is no pain without memory, there is also no true happiness.
The Relationship Between Pain and Pleasure
Related to the theme of memory is the idea that there can be no pleasure without pain and no pain without pleasure. No matter how delightful an experience is, you cannot value the pleasure it gives you unless you have some memory of a time when you have suffered. The members of Jonas’s community cannot appreciate the joys in their lives because they have never felt pain: their lives are totally monotonous, devoid of emotional variation. Similarly, they do not feel pain or grief because they do not appreciate the true wonder of life: death is not tragic to them because life is not precious. When Jonas receives memories from the Giver, the memories of pain open him to the idea of love and comfort as much as the memories of pleasure do.
The Importance of the Individual
At the Ceremony of Twelve, the community celebrates the differences between the twelve-year-old children for the first time in their lives. For many children, twelve is an age when they are struggling to carve out a distinct identity for themselves, differentiating themselves from their parents and peers. Among other things, The Giver is the story of Jonas’s development into an individual, maturing from a child dependent upon his community into a young man with unique abilities, dreams, and desires. The novel can even be seen as an allegory for this process of maturation: twelve-year-old Jonas rejects a society where everyone is the same to follow his own path. The novel encourages readers to celebrate differences instead of disparaging them or pretending they do not exist. People in Jonas’s society ignore his unusual eyes and strange abilities out of politeness, but those unusual qualities end up bringing lasting, positive change to the community.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Vision
The motif of vision runs throughout The Giver, from the first mention of Jonas’s unusual pale eyes to the final image of the lights twinkling in the village in Elsewhere. For most of the novel, vision represents all perception, both sensory and emotional. Jonas’s eyes, which appear to be “deeper” than other people’s, are actually able to see more deeply into objects than other people’s eyes: Jonas is one of the few people in the community who can see color. Jonas’s perception of color symbolizes his perception of the complicated emotions and sensations that other people cannot perceive: he sees life differently from the rest of the community. Jonas shares his abilities with the Giver and Gabe, both of whom have eyes the same color as his. Although the ending of the novel is ambiguous, we know that Jonas sees the village in his mind, even if the village does not really exist.
Nakedness
In Jonas’s community, it is forbidden to look at naked people, unless they are very young or very old. Moments involving physical nakedness are closely related to the idea of emotional nakedness: Jonas feels an emotional connection with the old woman, Larissa, when she trusts him to wash her body, and his training involves receiving memories through his bare back. Both situations involve trust and intimacy; both are curiously related to the idea of freedom. Jonas thinks of the naked woman as “free,” perhaps because he associates her physical nudity with a mind bare of the constraints his society places on human behavior, and the information that the Giver transmits to him is liberating in much the same way—it helps him to look beyond the community’s rules and beliefs. Nakedness is also related to innocence and childishness: the Old can be seen naked because they are treated like children, and Jonas’s relationship to the Giver is like a child’s to his father or grandfather.
Release
Though few people know it, the word “release” actually refers to death—or murder—in Jonas’s society, but throughout The Giver, the word means different things to different people. At the beginning of the novel, most of the characters truly believe that people who are released are physically sent to Elsewhere, the world beyond the limits of the community. Release is frightening or sad because no one would want to leave the community, not because it involves violence or death. Later, when Jonas discovers the real meaning of release, the word becomes ominous. At the end of the novel, however, when Jonas escapes despite the fact that he is forbidden to request release, he changes the meaning of the word once again, restoring its original meaning—an escape from the physical and psychological hold of the community.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Newchild Gabriel
For Jonas, the newchild Gabriel is a symbol of hope and of starting over. Babies frequently figure as symbols of hope and regeneration in literature, and in The Giver this makes perfect sense: Gabriel is too young to have absorbed the customs and rules of the community, so he is still receptive to the powerful memories that Jonas transmits to him. Jonas takes Gabriel with him to save Gabriel’s life, but his gesture is also symbolic of his resolve to change things, to start a new life Elsewhere. His struggles to keep Gabriel alive reflect his struggles to maintain his ideals in the face of difficulty.
The Sled
The sled, the first memory Jonas receives from the Giver, symbolizes the journey Jonas takes during his training and the discoveries he makes. It is red, a color that symbolizes the new, vital world of feelings and ideas that Jonas discovers. Before he transmits the memory, the Giver compares the difficulty he has in carrying the memories to the way a sled slows down as snow accumulates on its runners. The novelty and delight of the downhill ride are exhilarating, and Jonas enjoys the ride in the same way that he enjoys accumulating new memories. But the sled can be treacherous, too: the first memory of extreme pain that he experiences involves the sled. Pleasure and pain are inevitably related on the sled, just as they are in the memories. When, at the end of the novel, Jonas finds a real sled, it symbolizes his entry into a world where color, sensation, and emotion exist in reality, not just in memory.
The River
The river, which runs into the community and out of it to Elsewhere, symbolizes escape from the confines of the community. When little Caleb drowns in the river, it is one of the few events that the community cannot predict or control, and Jonas and the Giver are inspired to try to change the community by the idea of the river’s unpredictable behavior.
Chapters 1–2
Summary
We are introduced to Jonas, the eleven-year-old protagonist of the story, as he struggles to find the right word to describe his feelings as he approaches an important milestone. He rejects “frightened” as too strong a word, recalling a time when he had really been frightened: a year ago, an unidentified aircraft flew over his community—it was a strange and unprecedented event, since Pilots were not allowed to fly over the community. As Jonas remembers the community reaction to the event, we learn more about the society in which he lives. It is extremely structured, with official orders transmitted through loudspeakers planted all around the community. As a punishment, the pilot was “released” from the community—the worst fate that can befall a citizen. Jonas decides he is apprehensive, not frightened, about the important thing that is going to happen in December. Jonas and his society value the use of precise and accurate language.
At dinner that night, Jonas’s family—his father, mother, and seven-year-old sister Lily—participate in a nightly ritual called “the telling of feelings.” Each person describes an emotion that he or she experienced during the day and discusses it with the others. Lily says she was angry at a child visiting from a nearby community who did not observe her childcare group’s play area rules. Her parents help her to understand that the boy probably felt out of place, and she becomes less angry. Jonas’s father, who is a Nurturer (he takes care of the community’s babies, or newchildren), describes his struggles with a slowly developing baby whose weakness makes it a candidate for release. The family considers taking care of the baby for a while, though they are not allowed to adopt him—every household is allowed only one male and one female child. We also learn that spouses are assigned by the government. Jonas explains his apprehensiveness about the coming Ceremony of Twelve—the time when he will be assigned a career and begin life as an adult. We learn that every December, all of the children in the community are promoted to the next age group—all four-year-old children become Fives, regardless of the time of year when they were actually born. We also learn that fifty children are born every year. The ceremonies are different for each age group. At the Ceremony of One newchildren, who have spent their first year at the Nurturing Center, are assigned to family units and given a name to use in addition to the number they were given at birth. Jonas’s father confesses to his family that he has peeked at the struggling newchild’s name—Gabriel—in the hopes that calling him a name will help the child develop more quickly. Jonas is surprised that his father would break any kind of rule, though the members of the community seem to bend rules once in a while. For instance, older siblings often teach younger siblings to ride bicycles before the Ceremony of Nine, when they receive their first official bicycles.
Jonas’s parents reassure him that the Committee of Elders, the ruling group of the community, will choose a career for him that will suit him. The Committee members observe the Elevens all year, at school and play and at the volunteer work they are required to do after school, and consider each child’s abilities and interests when they make their selection. Jonas’s father tells him that when he was eleven, he knew he would be assigned the role of Nurturer, because it was clear that he loved newchildren and he spent all his volunteer hours in the Nurturing Center. When Jonas expresses concern about his friend Asher’s Assignment—he worries that Asher does not have any serious interests—his parents tell him not to worry, but remind him that after Twelve, he might lose touch with many of his childhood friends, since he will be spending his time with a new group, training for his job. Then Jonas’s sister Lily appears, asking for her “comfort object”—a community-issued stuffed elephant. The narrator refers to the comfort objects as “imaginary creatures. Jonas’s had been called a bear.”
Analysis
At the beginning of The Giver, we have a difficult time figuring out the setting of the novel. We do not know what it is that Jonas is afraid of—from the reference to unidentified aircraft, we might think that he lives in a war zone. When we find out that it is against the rules for Pilots to fly over the community, we know that Jonas lives in a community that is different from our own, but we do not know at first how different it. Lowry allows the small details about life in Jonas’s community to build up gradually into a more complete picture.
Initially, the picture we get of Jonas’s society is positive. From the emphasis on precision of language and the considerate, careful way in which Jonas’s family shares its feelings, we learn that his society values the clear communication of ideas. We also know that members of the community pay attention to each other’s feelings and try to solve each other’s problems in rational, reassuring ways: the family helps Lily to control her anger and encourages her to feel empathy for visitors in unfamiliar surroundings, and they resolve to help their father take care of a struggling baby. The community must be very safe and peaceful indeed if the only time Jonas can remember being frightened is when an unidentified plane flew over his community.
Some aspects of life in the community are startling, but they are easily explained. The loudspeakers transmitting orders to the people in the community are somewhat unsettling—the idea of a disembodied, faceless authority with the power to control many people’s actions is reminiscent of police states and dictatorships. At the same time, it is a convenient public address system that was able to reassure many frightened people. The fact that the government chooses people’s spouses, jobs, and children for them is also unsettling, but the picture we get of Jonas’s family life is full of tranquility and comfort—the system obviously works pretty well. We know that the society is extremely orderly and peaceful, and that everyone has a job that he or she enjoys and can do well. There seems to be very little competition in Jonas’s community. Jonas is not hoping for a desirable or prestigious position, just one that he will be able to do well. In general, the society seems to be an almost perfect model of a communist society, one in which everyone in the community works together for the common good and receives an equal share of the benefits of living in the community.
However, the discordant notes remain, highlighted by Jonas’s description of himself as “frightened” at the beginning of the book. Even though he immediately rejects the word as inaccurate, its appearance in the first sentence of the novel colors the mood of the first several pages. Since Jonas seems so comfortable with the more unusual aspects of his society, we begin to think of them as normal, but at the same time his fear at the beginning of the story makes us slightly wary of totally accepting them. We are more likely now to notice that the society’s rules, though they are meant to help its citizens, limit personal freedom. We are also more likely to pick up on the ominous meaning of release—the punishment given to the pilot who accidentally flew over the community. Why would an accident be given the most serious punishment in the community? What does release actually mean? The word usually has a positive meaning, but in this context it is negative. In the tension between the two meanings, Lowry hints that everything in the society might not be exactly how it seems.
By the end of Chapter 1, though Jonas has decided he is not frightened, he has decided that he is apprehensive. Having accepted that Jonas likes living in his community with his family, we have grown less frightened and more apprehensive with him. However, we have the feeling that, just like Jonas, the entire novel is on the brink of an important change. Jonas’s apprehension is a kind of foreshadowing that gets us ready for the idea that the whole society he lives in might be reaching an important milestone very soon, just as Jonas awaits the important milestone of the Ceremony of Twelve.
Chapters 3–4
Summary
He liked the feeling of safety here in this warm and quiet room; he liked the expression of trust on the woman’s face as she lay in the water unprotected, exposed, and free.
Jonas’s father brings the struggling newchild Gabriel home to spend nights with Jonas’s family. Lily remarks that Gabriel has “funny eyes” like Jonas—both boys have light eyes, while most people in the community have darker eyes. Lily is being slightly rude: in their society it is inappropriate to call attention to the ways in which people are different. Lily also says she hopes she will be assigned to be a Birthmother when she grows up, since she likes newchildren so much, but her mother tells her that the position of Birthmother carries very little honor—Birthmothers are pampered for three years while they produce children, but then do hard labor and never get to see their biological children.
Jonas thinks about the Speakers who make announcements to the community over the loudspeakers all day, including reprimands to rule-breakers. He remembers a time when an announcement was specifically directed at him, though his name was not mentioned—no one is singled out in his society. The announcement reminded male Elevens that “snacks are to be eaten, not hoarded,” referring to an apple that he had taken home with him from school. Jonas had taken the apple because, while playing catch with his friend Asher, he had noticed the apple change in a way he could not describe. On closer investigation, the apple remained the same shape, size, and nondescript shade as always, but then it would briefly change again, though Asher did not seem to notice. Jonas took the apple home to investigate it further, but discovered nothing. The event bewildered him.
In Chapter 4, Jonas meets Asher so that they can do their mandatory volunteer hours together. Children from eight to eleven volunteer at different locations daily to develop skills and get a sense of their occupational interests. Jonas enjoys volunteer hours because they are less regulated than other hours of his day—he gets to choose where he spends them. He volunteers at a variety of places, enjoying the different experiences, and has no idea what his Assignment will be. Today, he goes to the House of the Old, where he notices Asher’s bike is parked. In the bathing room, he gives a bath to an elderly woman. He appreciates the sense of safety and trust he gets from the woman—it is against the rules to look at other people naked in any situation, but the rule does not apply to the Old or newchildren. They discuss the release of one of the Old, a man named Roberto. The old woman, Larissa, describes the release as a wonderful celebration—the man’s life story was narrated, he was toasted by the other residents of the House of the Old, he made a farewell speech, and then walked blissfully through a special door to be released. Larissa does not know what actually happens when someone is released, but she assumes it is wonderful; she does not understand why children are forbidden to attend.
Analysis
In these chapters, we begin to get a sense of how different Jonas is from other members of his society and also of the degree to which his society discourages differences. Jonas is both physically different, in that his eyes are a very unusual color, and mentally different—he sees the world in a different way, as illustrated by his ability to see the apple change. He is also slightly troubled by some of the strict rules that govern his society. He enjoys the closeness he gets from physical contact with the old woman and does not understand why that kind of closeness is forbidden with other people. He also enjoys having freedom of choice in a way that other people in his community do not seem to appreciate as much. He likes his volunteer hours because he can choose where to spend them, and he takes advantage of that freedom more than most people do. However, although Jonas enjoys freedom, he is still a loyal member of the community. He follows the rules scrupulously, apologizing for stealing the apple as soon as he realizes he has taken it, and he does notdoes not think seriously about changing the society’s rules.
Lowry uses Jonas’s unusual eyes as a metaphor for the unusual way in which he sees the world. His eyes, different from other people’s, are a physical representation of his different “vision”: he is different on the inside as well as on the outside. The fact that his eyes seem deeper than other people’s is also significant. The moment when Jonas sees the apple change will be used later in the novel as an example of Jonas’s ability to “see beyond”—to physically see past what other people in his community see, to see qualities of objects that are deeper than the qualities other people see. This ability to see colors when everyone else sees the world in nondescript shades of dark and light is closely related to Jonas’s spiritual and emotional ability later in the novel to feel emotions more deeply than other people do.
At this point, the description of how the apple changes is slightly confusing—we have no idea what happens to it when it changes. However, it is the only way that Jonas, with no experience of color, can describe what happens to the apple: it changes, taking on a quality it did not have before. Lowry gives us some hints about what happens to the apple, though. When Jonas describes the apple, he notes that it is the same size and shape as before.
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