The Giver

Summary

Jonas is eleven and lives with his father, a Nurturer who cares for newborns, his mother, who holds an important post in the Department of Justice, and his younger sister Lily in a tidy, enclosed Community where nearly everything is decided for its citizens. Families are assigned, each with one son and one daughter; babies are born to Birthmothers and given out at the yearly December Ceremony; children receive bicycles at Nine and jobs at Twelve; precise language is enforced with public apologies; everyone takes a daily pill once the Stirrings of adolescent desire begin; and those who break the rules three times, the old, and newborns who fail to thrive are "released" to a vague Elsewhere. The climate is controlled, the land is flat, and no one sees color. At the Ceremony of Twelve, while his friend Asher is made Assistant Director of Recreation and Fiona is assigned to the Caretakers of the Old, Jonas is passed over and then named the next Receiver of Memory, an honored post exempt from the rules of rudeness and permitted to lie. In the Annex, an old man who asks Jonas to call him the Giver begins transmitting to him, through touch, the memories of the world before the Community chose Sameness: a sled ride down a snowy hill, sunshine and then sunburn, the color red he has glimpsed in an apple and in Fiona's hair, a broken leg, hunger, the killing of an elephant, a battlefield where a wounded boy begs for water, and, at last, a family gathered by a Christmas tree with grandparents, which shows Jonas what love was. He learns that a previous Receiver, Rosemary, could not bear the painful memories and asked to be released after a few weeks, and that her memories then flooded back into the people. Meanwhile his father brings home a fretful infant, Gabriel, who shares Jonas's pale eyes and sleeps calmly when Jonas passes him soothing memories. When the Giver shows him a recorded release, Jonas watches his father cheerfully inject the smaller of newborn twins and dispose of the body, and realizes that release means death. He and the Giver, who reveals that Rosemary was his daughter, plan Jonas's escape so that the memories will return to everyone; but when Jonas hears that Gabriel is to be released the next morning, he flees early by bicycle with the baby, hiding from search planes by covering them both in memories of cold. Starving and freezing in snow-covered hills, he finds a sled and rides it down toward a house with colored lights, hearing music, and the novel leaves its ending open. Houghton Mifflin published the book in 1993; it won the 1994 Newbery Medal.

Plot or Argument

• Chapters 1–3: The Community

  Jonas, apprehensive about the coming December, describes the rules of his Community: the evening telling of feelings, assigned families, the Nurturing Center, the Ceremonies from One to Twelve, and Gabriel, the uncertain newborn his father brings home. Jonas sees an apple briefly change in midair.

• Chapters 4–6: Volunteer hours and the December Ceremony

  Jonas does volunteer hours at the House of the Old, bathes Larissa and hears of the celebration of Roberto's release. A dream of Fiona brings the first Stirrings and the daily pill. The Ceremony for the younger ages unfolds, with naming, bicycles and a child's release for repeated rule-breaking recalled in passing.

• Chapters 7–9: The Ceremony of Twelve

  Asher, Fiona and the others receive Assignments; the Chief Elder skips Jonas, then announces that he has been selected as the Receiver of Memory and lists the capacities he has shown. Jonas reads his strange new rules, including permission to lie and a ban on telling others of his training.

• Chapters 10–13: Training in the Annex

  The Giver transmits the memory of snow and a sled, then sunshine, then sunburn. Jonas learns about color and sees red in Fiona's hair. He discovers that the Community gave up weather, hills and choice for Sameness, and that the Giver advises the Elders from memory.

• Chapters 14–17: Pain and love

  Jonas receives a broken leg on an icy hill, hunger and war, and then the memory of a family Christmas. He begins to resent his friends' ignorance, stops taking his pill, and finds his friends playing at war without knowing what it means. He secretly gives memories to Gabriel to help him sleep.

• Chapters 18–20: Rosemary and the meaning of release

  The Giver tells of Rosemary's failed training ten years earlier. At Jonas's request he plays the recording of Jonas's father releasing a twin by injection. Jonas refuses to go home; the Giver reveals that Rosemary was his daughter, and the two plan Jonas's escape so the memories return to the people.

• Chapters 21–23: Flight to Elsewhere

  Learning that Gabriel will be released, Jonas takes the baby and his father's bicycle and flees, hiding from planes with memories of snow. Food runs out, rain and then snow come, and in the cold Jonas finds a sled at the top of a hill and rides it down toward lights and music.

Characters

• Jonas, protagonist

  Thoughtful eleven-year-old, then Twelve, chosen as the Receiver of Memory; he has pale eyes and the capacity to see beyond.

• The Giver, mentor

  The aged current Receiver of Memory, weary with the pain he holds, who trains Jonas and helps him escape.

• Gabriel, infant

  A pale-eyed newborn who fails to thrive at the Nurturing Center; Jonas carries him away when he is to be released.

• Jonas's father, Nurturer

  A kindly caregiver of newborns who performs releases by injection without understanding what they are.

• Jonas's mother, Department of Justice official

  A careful, rule-keeping woman who deals with Community infractions.

• Lily, younger sister

  Jonas's chatty, opinionated sister, who turns Eight during the book.

• Asher, friend

  Jonas's cheerful, imprecise friend, assigned as Assistant Director of Recreation.

• Fiona, friend

  A gentle red-haired girl assigned to the Caretakers of the Old, whose hair first shows Jonas color.

• The Chief Elder, leader

  The woman who presides over the Ceremonies and announces Jonas's selection.

• Rosemary, former Receiver-in-training

  The Giver's daughter, chosen ten years before Jonas, who asked to be released after five weeks of training.

• Larissa, resident of the House of the Old

  An old woman Jonas bathes, who describes the release ceremony of Roberto.

Lessons

• A world without pain is a world without love

  The Community has given up snow, color, war and grief, and with them it has given up the deep feeling Jonas finds in the memory of the family Christmas. Lowry shows that sorrow and love come into the world together, and that a people protected from one loses the other.

  • Why does the Giver save the memory of the Christmas family until after Jonas has received war and a broken leg?
  • When Jonas asks his parents whether they love him, why do they tell him the word is imprecise?
  • Would you trade away all pain if it meant losing strong feelings too?

• Naming hides the truth

  The Community calls killing release, sends its unwanted to Elsewhere, and corrects children who use words loosely. Careful language is used to keep people from seeing what they do. Jonas's father is not cruel; he simply has never been given the words or the memories to understand his work.

  • Why is it so important to the Community that children speak with precision?
  • How does the word release keep Jonas's father from knowing what he is doing?
  • Can you think of other words people use to make something hard sound gentle?

• Wisdom needs memory

  The Elders consult the Giver because only he remembers what happened when people chose badly before. A people that forgets its past cannot judge well, and one person carrying all the memory for everyone is lonely and overburdened.

  • Why did the Community choose to give its memories to one person rather than keep them all?
  • What happened when Rosemary's memories came back to the people, and why did it frighten the Elders?
  • What memories does your own family or church keep, and why?

• Choosing costs something

  Jonas learns that choice is risky: people might choose wrong. Yet his own escape with Gabriel is a costly choice made for the sake of a life. Lowry places the value of freedom in the willingness to protect others, not in doing as one pleases.

  • Why does Jonas leave earlier than he and the Giver had planned?
  • What does Jonas give up when he leaves the Community?
  • Is the Giver right to stay behind?

Context

The Giver appeared after a long line of adult dystopian novels in which planned societies trade freedom for comfort, but it was written for young readers and told entirely from a child's point of view. Its Community, with assigned families, controlled language and engineered calm, has no stated date or place; Lowry has said she drew on the closely guarded army posts where she lived as a child.

Composition

Lowry has written that the book grew partly from visiting her elderly father, whose memory was failing and who had lost recollection of painful family events, which led her to imagine a society that removed the memory of suffering. Houghton Mifflin published it in April 1993 with a cover photograph of an old man's face that Lowry herself had taken. It won the 1994 Newbery Medal, her second. Lowry later continued the world in Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004) and Son (2012), the last of which shows what became of Jonas and Gabriel.

Reception

The novel became one of the most widely read books in American middle schools, has sold more than twelve million copies, and ranked fourth among children's novels in a 2012 School Library Journal readers' poll. Its depiction of infant release and its open ending have also made it one of the more frequently challenged books in American schools; Lowry has spoken against such challenges. A film directed by Phillip Noyce, with Jeff Bridges as the Giver, was released in 2014.

Comparisons

• number-the-stars

  Lowry's earlier Newbery winner shows real people in occupied Denmark choosing to protect the vulnerable at risk to themselves; Jonas makes the same choice for Gabriel in an invented society that has forgotten why such choices matter.

• fahrenheit-451

  Both imagine a society kept docile by erasing the past, books in Bradbury and memory in Lowry, and both end with the hero fleeing the city to find people who remember.

• a-wrinkle-in-time

  Camazotz, where children bounce balls in perfect rhythm under IT, is an earlier picture of enforced sameness; Meg defeats it by love, which is also what Jonas's last great memory gives him.

• the-republic

  Plato's guardians assign roles, manage births and raise children in common for the good of the city; the Community follows several of those proposals and lets readers test them in a story.

• utopia

  More's island of uniform cities and regulated lives raises the old question Lowry takes up for children: whether a society can be made orderly and just by removing private choice.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The moments when Jonas sees something change, the apple in Chapter 1, the faces in the audience, and Fiona's hair, before he knows the word red.
• The order in which the Giver transmits memories in Chapters 11 to 16, from the sled to sunburn, war and the family by the Christmas tree.
• Every time the Community uses a soft word for a hard thing: release, Elsewhere, the apology for imprecise language, and the parents' answer when Jonas asks whether they love him.
• The infant Gabriel, from his first appearance in Jonas's home to the night Jonas carries him away, and what Jonas gives him along the way.
• The open ending in Chapter 23, the sled, the lights and the music, and whether Jonas and Gabriel arrive anywhere.

Key terms and names

Receiver of Memory

The single citizen who holds all the memories of the time before Sameness. The Elders consult him when they face something new, and the people never learn what he carries.

Sameness

The Community's choice, made generations earlier, to remove weather, hills, color and strong feeling so that no one would suffer or choose wrongly.

Release

The Community's word for sending someone to Elsewhere. Jonas learns in Chapter 19 that it is death by injection.

Stirrings

The first feelings of romantic desire, which the Community treats with a daily pill from the time a child reports a dream like Jonas's dream of Fiona.

Ceremony of Twelve

The December gathering at which twelve-year-olds receive their lifelong Assignments; at Jonas's ceremony the Chief Elder skips him before naming him Receiver.

Elsewhere

The place the citizens believe the released go. For Jonas, at the end, it becomes the real world outside the Community.

Seeing beyond

The capacity Jonas, the Giver, Rosemary and Gabriel share, connected to their pale eyes, which lets them glimpse color and receive memories.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What happens at the Ceremony of Twelve, and how does the crowd react when the Chief Elder passes over Jonas's number?
2. Comprehension What is the first memory the Giver transmits to Jonas, and which memory first brings him pain?
3. Comprehension What does Jonas see on the recording of his father's work in Chapter 19, and what does he realize release means?
4. Interpretation The Community has no color, no hills and no snow. Why might Lowry have chosen these things in particular as the first gifts the Giver passes to Jonas?
5. Interpretation Jonas's father is gentle with Gabriel at home and with the twin he releases. Is he a good man, an ignorant man, or both?
6. Interpretation Why does the Giver say that memories need to be shared, and how does the plan for Jonas's escape put that belief into practice?
7. Interpretation Lowry leaves the ending open. What details in the last chapter suggest that Jonas has found a real home, and what details leave room for doubt?
8. Big Question Is it ever right for a society to take away people's choices to keep them safe? Where would you draw the line?

Faith Connections

• Psalm 139:13-16 (Scripture)

  The psalmist praises God for knitting him together in his mother's womb and writing his days in a book. The Community measures newborns like Gabriel by whether they thrive, while the psalm grounds each life's worth in its Maker.

• Deuteronomy 6:6-12 (Scripture)

  Israel is told to teach God's deeds to its children and warned not to forget once it lives in comfort. Lowry's Community has done exactly what Moses warns against, handing all its memory to one man so that the rest may be comfortable.

• Romans 12:15 (Scripture)

  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. The Giver's loneliness comes from carrying sorrow no one else may share, and his hope is that the people will learn to bear it together.

• Augustine, Confessions X (Great Conversation)

  Augustine marvels at the vast halls of memory and finds there the place where he meets God and knows himself. The Community's decision to remove memory amounts, in Augustine's terms, to removing part of what makes a person a self.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The Community reasoned that pain, conflict and wrong choices come from memory, difference and freedom; so it removed them and gave all memory to one Receiver. But love, beauty and moral judgment come from the same sources: without memory of suffering, Jonas's father cannot recognize killing, and without choice no one can choose mercy. Therefore a society that removes suffering by removing memory and choice also removes love and conscience, and Jonas must leave it to save Gabriel and return the memories to everyone.

Rhetorical device: euphemism. Throughout the novel release stands for death, and Lowry withholds its meaning until the recording in Chapter 19, so the reader discovers the euphemism at the same moment Jonas does.

Debate: Resolved: Jonas was right to leave the Community rather than stay and help the people bear the returning memories.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace the memories the Giver transmits, from the sled ride to the Christmas family, and argue what Jonas learns from the order in which he receives them.

Comparison with Fahrenheit 451: Montag and Jonas each discover that their peaceful society has given up something precious, and each flees. Compare what was given up in each book, books or memories, and argue which loss is more dangerous to a people.

Medical Lens

Several of the Community's institutions read as medicine put to the service of social control. Release, presented as a ceremony and carried out by caregivers, is a lethal injection given to the old, to rule-breakers who ask for it or are sentenced, and to newborns judged unable to thrive or born as the second of identical twins; Jonas's father performs it in the same tender voice he uses for feeding. The daily pill taken from the onset of the Stirrings suppresses adolescent sexual feeling, and Jonas notices that his emotions sharpen when he stops taking it, which invites discussion of pharmacological emotional blunting, though the novel names no drug and describes no mechanism. Pain itself is removed from ordinary life; minor injuries are treated at once with medication, so that Jonas's first memory of a broken leg and a battlefield wound is a revelation. The House of the Old offers careful but impersonal care, with bathing and feeding by trained volunteers. Rosemary's request for release after receiving painful memories can be read alongside discussions of suicide and of grief, but the book frames it within its own invented customs. These are thematic readings of a fable, not portraits of real clinical practice.

• Chapter 5

  After his dream of Fiona, Jonas's mother explains the Stirrings and gives him the first of the pills he must take every day.

  Sexuality Medicalized Pharmacology Poisons
• Chapters 4 and 7

  Jonas bathes Larissa at the House of the Old and hears of Roberto's celebrated release.

  Aging Senescence Death Dying
• Chapter 12

  The Giver transmits sunburn, Jonas's first experience of pain beyond the scraped knees that are instantly medicated.

  Pain
• Chapter 15

  Jonas receives the memory of a battlefield where a wounded boy dies asking for water.

  WAR Wounds Death Dying
• Chapter 19

  The recorded release of a newborn twin by injection, performed by Jonas's father.

  Medical Ethics Death Dying
• Chapter 20

  The Giver tells how his daughter Rosemary, overwhelmed by painful memories, asked to be released, and how the people suffered when her memories returned.

  Grief Medical Ethics

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Explain how the Community uses words such as release, Elsewhere and precise to keep people from understanding their own lives, using at least three scenes.

• Fiction

  Write the morning in the Community after Jonas leaves, as the memories begin to come back to his parents, Lily, Asher and Fiona.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between the Giver and the Chief Elder after Jonas's disappearance, in which he tries to help her bear the returning memories.

• Classroom

  List the rules of the Community that the novel mentions, sort them into those meant to prevent pain and those meant to prevent choice, and debate which category does more harm.

Further Reading

• Gathering Blue, Lois Lowry

  The second book of the quartet, set in a different community.

• Messenger, Lois Lowry

• Son, Lois Lowry

  The final book, which returns to the Community and to Gabriel.

• Number the Stars, Lois Lowry

• Looking Back: A Book of Memories, Lois Lowry

  Lowry's photographic memoir of her own life.