Genre 6: The Giver

The Giver by Lois Lowry
Houghton Mifflin, 1993
ISBN 0-395-64566-2

Summary:
In Jonas' world, life is controlled by strict rules and behavior codes, which makes life smooth and comfortable. His predictable life is upended, however, when he begins to see things his friends and family cannot. At his Ceremony of Twelves, he is named as the new Receiver thanks in part to this unusual gift. Jonas finds that beneath his community's peaceful exterior lie choices that will determine whether or not he will embrace the fullness of being human.

Critical Analysis:
Any teenager can identify with 11-year-old Jonas; he is at an age where life is changing rapidly and adult responsibility looms on the horizon. He just doesn't realize yet exactly how much his life is about to change.
No one can read The Giver without encountering new ideas about society, rules, choice, and contentment. The reader is forced to examine what it truly means to live and what the cost of freedom is.
Lowry employs foreshadowing masterfully and weaves tantalizing hints about Jonas' world into every chapter. Early in the book, Jonas notices that baby Gabriel's eyes--which are the same unusually light shade as his own--seem to have a depth "as if one were looking into the clear water of the river, down to the bottom, where things might lurk which hadn't been discovered yet." This is a perfect description of Jonas himself, in whom important "things" certainly have not yet been discovered. The reader notices the community is different from our world early in the book, but the differences seem small at first. In fact, the reader can almost imagine this is a small, isolated town somewhere in middle America near the present time. Then small details emerge such as the single word in a line from Chapter 2: "But her father had already gone to the shelf and taken down the stuffed elephant which was kept there. Many of the comfort objects, like Lily's, were soft, stuffed imaginary creatures." The subtleness of the clue is what hooks readers. Why is the elephant considered imaginary? What happened to the elephants?
Of course, the reader is never given a definitive answer. In fact, part of the beauty (and for some readers, the frustration) of the novel is that Lowry allows the reader to take part in deciding what has happened. At the end of the story, after his long, heroic journey, Jonas begins to sled down a hill "with certainty and joy that below" was happiness. Lowry does not clarify if that happiness is in the physical world or perhaps after death. In her Newbery acceptance speech, Lowry herself says that anyone looking for the "right" ending will be disappointed, and that, in fact, there isn't one. She explains that "There's a right one for each of us, and it depends on our own beliefs, our own hopes.


Review Excerpts:
"In a complete departure from her other novels, Lowry has written an intriguing story. . . . The Giver, who passes on to Jonas the burden of being the holder for the community of all memory 'back and back and back,' teaches him the cost of living in an environment that is 'without color, pain, or past.' The tension leading up to the Ceremony, . . . and the drama and responsibility of the sessions with The Giver are gripping. The final flight for survival is as riveting as it is inevitable. The author makes real abstract concepts, such as the meaning of a life in which there are virtually no choices to be made and no experiences with deep feelings. This tightly plotted story and its believable characters will stay with readers for a long time."

Amy Kellman, School Library Journal, May 1993, v. 39

"The future society in which Jonas lives is benevolently, but totally, controlled. Babies are birthed by anonymous Birthmothers. . . . Sex is repressed, thanks to a pill. . . . Vocations are assigned by the Committee of Elders when each child reaches the age of twelve. While all these strictures are staples of science fiction, author Lowry, new to the genre, must be credited for the calm simplicity with which she describes Jonas' community. . . . The novel takes a didactic turn when Jonas, through the elderly Giver, begins to receive memories of colors, Christmas, family warmth and deep unhappiness. All these losses have already been implicitly rendered, and spelling them out turns story into sermon. . . . Lowry could go a lot further with the intriguingly cool world she has created, but the present novel feels too much like a scene-setting introduction."

Roger Sutton, Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, April 1993, v. 46

Connections:

• Have students make a list of actions for which they have complete choice, no choice (must follow rules), and partial choice. Then discuss whether or not any choice is complete or any rule is foolproof. What makes people decide to follow rules or not?
• Research the utopia movement of the 19th century. Why did most of the communities fail? Why did communities such as the Oneida and Amana succeed?
• Have students design their own utopian communities, complete with a community philosophy, map, and laws.
• Examine how Lowry's prose style changes from the beginning of the book to the end. Why do you think her sentence structure and description change?
• What is an allusion? Why did Lois Lowry choose an apple as the first object Jonas could "see beyond"? To what story might the apple connect?
• Respond to the story's ending. What do you think happened? If you were to write the next chapter, what would happen?
• How is The Giver a hero's journey? What elements of the hero's journey can you identify?
• Compare The Giver to The Last Book in the Universe. In what ways are Jonas and Spaz' quests similar?