The Giver

Final Book Report

October 11, 2011 Hannah Rose Gillespie

The main character, Jonas, is followed around as he awaits the Ceremony of Twelve. He lives in a Utopia, or perfect society. Everyone receives a job at the Ceremony of Twelve, and can be married and may request children. Each family unit consists of four people, a father, a mother, and two children, a boy and a girl. Everyone must follow the societys rules; some are less serious as others, like you must only ride your bike when you become a Nine, no younger. The more serious rules include not lying and not questioning things. When the Ceremony of Twelve arrives, the Elder skips over Jonass name. Everyone is flustered, but they soon find out that he will be the new Receiver of Memories. As the new Receiver of Memories, Jonas has a new set of rules which include; being allowed to lie, asking personal questions, and not being allowed to receive medication that will have to do with his training. Jonas then meets the Giver, who will be giving him all of the memories of the society, some pleasant, some painful. Jonas telepathically receives memories of things eliminated from his world: violence, sadness, and loss, as well as true love, beauty, joy, adventure, animals, and family. Jonas begins to see colors, something completely new to him. Jonas starts to wonder why the community doesnt want memories, and how it would help the community learn all about their past. Jonas wonders about release, so he asks the Giver about it. The Giver then shows Jonas what a release is through a video. Jonas realizes that a release is not moving on to another community, it is a lethal injection. This begins to spark a question in his mind about Rosemary, the previous Receiver of Memories that wanted to apply for release. Jonas then finds out that Rosemary was the Givers daughter. Jonas starts to wonder about the community and memories, and how the memories would help the community learn all about their past. Eventually, these revelations prompt Jonas to seek to change the community and return emotion and meaning to the world. He and the Giver plan on doing this by having Jonas leave the community, which would cause all of the memories he was given to be released to the rest of the people, allowing them to feel the powerful emotions that Jonas and the Giver feel. Gabriel was a baby that was living with Jonas and his family, a baby that was to be released; Jonas notices that unlike the rest of the community, he can receive memories. Jonas does this to calm Gabriel down to help him sleep. Jonas father then says that because Gabriel is not at an appropriate weight, he is to be released. At first, the escape seems successful, with all of the search planes finally giving up their search for Jonas. Soon, however, food runs out and they

grow weak. Cold and hungry, Jonas and Gabe begin to lose hope, but then remembering the memory of sunshine Jonas was given, he uses it and regains strength. Jonas begins to no longer care about himself, but only about Gabe's safety; it is here that he feels happy as he remembers his parents and sister, his friends and The Giver. Jonas and Gabriel cross a snow-covered hill in the dark and find a sled on top, which Jonas remembers from the first memory he ever received. He and Gabriel board the sled and go down the hill where they seem to hear music coming from some houses. The ending is left up to the readers to find out if they had lived or had died.

We really have to protect people from making the wrong choices. Jonas says this in Ch. 13, moments after having protested that he wished colors still existed so that people could have the pleasure and freedom of choosing between them. After some thought, his protests give way to the understanding that, if people were allowed to choose between colors, they might get so used to making choices that they would want to choose their jobs and their spouses. Theres nothing we can do. Its always been this way. Before me, before you, before the ones who came before you. Back and back and back. Jonas says this in Chapter 20 in an outburst of bitterness and despair at the Givers suggestion that the two of them might be able to devise a plan to return the memories to the community. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo. These are the last lines of The Giver. The music that welcomes Jonas to the Christmas-celebrating town is the first he has ever heard in his life, and it shows not only his arrival in Elsewhere, where he can live life to the fullest as he wants to, but also his beginning to a new kind of seeing and hearing beyond, one that until this moment has been totally unavailable to him. "But why can't everyone have the memories? I think it would seem a little easier if the memories were shared. You and I wouldn't have to bear so much by ourselves, if everyone took a part." The Giver sighed, "You're right," he said, "But then everyone would be burdened and pained. They don't want that. And that's the real reason The Receiver is so vital to them, and so honored. They selected me and you to lift that burden from themselves." When you look at this quote, it shows the community is kind of a coward for not wanting bear these memories. "Rosemary had only those five weeks worth, and most of them were good ones. But there were those few terrible memories, the ones that overwhelmed her. For a while they overwhelmed the community. All those feelings! They'd never experienced that before. When you read his quote, you wonder what the community would do if they were to bear Jonass memories. "The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared." This quote reaches the point in which we see that the problem is not the memories itself, but the way the community deals with memories.

He rested for a moment, breathing deeply. I am so weighted with them, he said. This quote shows that memories may bring wisdom, but may also bring pain. "There's much more. There's all that goes beyond all that is Elsewhere and all that goes back, and back, and back. I received all of those, when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future." If the wisdom of the past causes you to make decisions of the future, you can see why the community doesnt want to change. "They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them." This quote shows that Jonas wanted to fix his community, which foreshadows later events in the story. "Sometimes I wish they'd ask for my wisdom more often-there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don't want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable-so painless. It's what they've chosen." This quote depicts the life in Jonass community and how truly predictable it is.

One of the themes in The Giver is pain and pleasure shapes a society. This is basically saying that 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 Jonass community cannot appreciate the joys in their lives because they have never felt pain. Their lives are very boring, they do not feel grief because they do not truly know the wonder of life. As Jonas receives memories from the Giver, his memories of pain open him up to the ideas of family and love and how much he loves that feeling of home and comfort. Lowry explores this idea in the text by having the Giver give Jonas more memories of pain, and more of comfort and warmth; Jonas really thinks about all he is given, and explores all the pain and family memories he receives.

Another theme explored in The Giver is the importance of memory. 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 societys 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 reminiscence for the things the community gave up in order to live in total peace and harmony. 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.

Be an individual is a very important theme in The Giver. 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. At the Ceremony of Twelve, the community celebrates the differences between the twelve-year-old children for the first time in their lives. People in Jonass society ignore his unusual eyes and strange abilities out of politeness, but those unusual qualities end up bringing lasting, positive change to the community. Twelve-year-old Jonas rejects a society where everyone is the same to follow his own path. I think Lowry wanted to

make this a theme encourage readers to celebrate differences instead of underappreciating them or pretending they do not exist. The final theme I have is that a society will never be a Utopia. In The Giver, the community was very orderly and stable as a society, but it is not a true society. A Utopia is a perfect society. No society will ever be perfect because everyones idea of perfect is different. In Jonass world, only one person bares the memories for the society. If no one knows about the past, it is very hard to learn for the future. I understand that the community does not want to bear all of the bad and painful memories, but there are so many pleasant memories to look forward to. The pain will only be there for a little while, while you can make the positive memories live on. Although there are rules everyone has to follow, it is still possible to break them. No one will ever die of natural causes, they will get a lethal injection. It may be an easy way out, but it is not pleasant. If you do not remember your errors, you may repeat themso 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. A community is not perfect if no one is truly happy. To be happy, you need something to compare it to, like that of bad memories and pain and other happy memories. As you can see, The Giver was a very interesting and insightful novel. It reached into your mind and made you truly think about what happiness really is. It explores the ideas of pain and pleasure and how they shape a society by shaping your past to help your future. Vision is a large part of the book as well. Jonas and the Giver were the only people in that society to see colors. Imagine a world without color, memory, and full of rules. Would release really be part of a perfect society? What truly makes a world perfect? Jonas couldnt live in that world anymore, he had to leave. He wanted the world to have his memories. The good, the bad, the pleasant, the painful. The ones that would shape the community forever more. As you grow older, would you want all the memories? Painful or not? Would they shape the way you are, learn, and live? If you could change the way your society works, would you?