The Giver is a 1993 young adult dystopian novel written by American author Lois Lowry In the novel, society has taken away pain and strife by converting to "Sameness", a plan that has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. In an effort to preserve order, the society has a true sense of equality and lacks any color, climate, or terrain. The protagonist of the story, a 12-year-old boy named Jonas, is selected to inherit the position of Receiver of Memory, the person who stores all the memories of the time before Sameness. Jonas struggles with concepts of the new emotions and things introduced to him, and whether they are inherently good, evil, or in between, and whether it is possible to have one without the other.
The Giver won the 1994 Newbery Medal and has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. A 2012 survey by School Library Journal designated it as the fourth-best children's novel of all time. It has been the subject of a large body of scholarly analysis, with academics considering themes of memory, religion, color, eugenics and utopia within the novel. In Australia, Canada, and the United States, it is required on many core curriculum reading lists in middle school, but it is also frequently challenged. It ranked #11 on the American Library Association list of the most challenged books of the 1990s, ranked #23 in the 2000s, and ranked #61 in the 2010s.
The novel is the first in a loose quartet of novels known as The Giver Quartet, with three subsequent books set in the same universe: Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004), and Son (2012). In 2014, a film adaptation was released, starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, and Brenton Thwaites and directed by Philip Noyce.
Plot Jonas, a 12-year-old boy, lives in a community isolated from all except a few similar towns, where everyone has an assigned role. With the annual Ceremony of Twelve upcoming, he is nervous, as he will be assigned his life's work by the Community's leaders, the Committee of Elders. He is reassured by his father, a Nurturer (who cares for the infants in the Community) and his mother, a high-ranking official in the Department of Justice.
During the ceremony, Jonas is assembled with his classmates. The Chief Elder, who presides, initially does not call Jonas. After everyone else is called, the Chief Elder explains that Jonas was not given a normal assignment, but instead has been selected as the next "Receiver of Memory", to be trained by the current one, who sits among the Elders and shares unusual pale eyes with Jonas. The position has high status and responsibility, and Jonas quickly finds himself growing distant from his classmates, including his close friends. The rules Jonas receives further separate him, as they allow him no time with his friends and require him to keep his training secret. They also allow him to lie and withhold his feelings from his family, which are generally not allowed in the Community.
Once he begins, Jonas discovers the purpose of his position: the Receiver retains the memories from all of history and is the only one allowed access to books outside of permitted text. The current Receiver, who asks Jonas to call him the Giver, begins transferring those memories to Jonas, as those in the Community know nothing of the past. These memories, as well as restricted books, give the Receiver perspective to advise the Council of Elders. The first memory is of sliding down a snow-covered hill on a sled, shocking Jonas as he has never seen a sled, snow, or a hill. These memories have been given up, assuring security and conformity (called Sameness). Even color has been surrendered, and the Giver shows Jonas a rainbow. He gives Jonas darker memories of hunger and war. The Giver reveals he previously had an apprentice, named Rosemary, but does not reveal her fate.
Jonas's father is concerned about an infant at the Nurturing Center who is failing to thrive, and receives special permission to bring him home at night. The baby's name will be Gabriel if he grows strong enough to be assigned to a family. He has pale eyes, like Jonas and the Giver. Jonas grows attached to him, especially when Jonas finds that he can receive memories. If Gabriel does not recover, he will be "released from the Community"—in common speech, taken Elsewhere. This has happened to individuals deemed unfit for the Community, including Rosemary. The Giver shows Jonas a secret video of Jonas's father doing his job: releasing the smaller of two identical twin newborns through a lethal injection before putting the infant in a trash chute, since identical community members are forbidden. This causes Jonas to learn that those who are "released" are actually killed.
Believing his father is a murderer, Jonas initially refuses to return home, but the Giver convinces him that without the memories, the people of the Community cannot know right versus wrong. Rosemary was unable to endure the darker memories and instead killed herself with poison. Jonas and the Giver devise a plan to return the Community's memories. Both agree that Jonas will leave, thereby returning the memories to them, while the Giver will stay to help them learn to live with their memories before joining his daughter, Rosemary, in death. They plan to fake Jonas's drowning to limit the search for him, but he instead escapes in a rush with Gabriel upon learning of the child's imminent release. The two are near death from cold and starvation when they reach the border of what Jonas believes must be Elsewhere. Using his mysterious ability to "see beyond", he finds a sled at the top of a snowy hill. He and Gabriel ride the sled down towards a house filled with colored lights and a Christmas tree, and for the first time he hears something he believes must be music. The ending is ambiguous, with Jonas experiencing symptoms of hypothermia.
At the 2009 National Book Festival, Lowry joked during a Q&A: "Jonas is alive, by the way. You don't need to ask that question."
Background Lowry has stated that her books all explore "the importance of human connection… the vital need for humans to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment."Lois Lowry (1937--). (2020). In D. G. Felder, The American women's almanac: 500 years of making history. Visible Ink Press. Credo Reference. Like Lowry's other books, The Giver shows changes in the characters' lives, reflecting this fascination in the multifaceted dimensions of growing up.Zaidman, Laura M. "Lois Lowry: Overview." Twentieth-Century Young Adult Writers, edited by Laura Standley Berger, St. James Press, 1994. Twentieth-Century Writers Series. Gale Literature Resource Center.
The Giver was initially inspired by Lowry's interaction with her father, who, in his senility, kept forgetting about the long-ago death of her sister; she imagined "a novel in which people are deprived of the memories of suffering, grief, and pain."Lowry, Lois. "Newbery Medal Acceptance." Children's Literature Review, edited by Linda R. Andres, vol. 46, Gale, 1998. Gale Literature Resource Center. She based the novel's setting in part on the closely guarded army bases in which she had grown up, her father having been an army dentist. She has stated that the characters in The Giver have lived in a sterile world for so long that they are in danger of losing the real emotions that make them human."Why did Lois Lowry write the book The Giver?" eNotes Editorial, 6 Feb. 2018.
Analysis of themes
Memory Bradford et al. argue that The Giver represents a community where the lack of cultural memory leads to an inability to avoid societal mistakes, preventing the community from becoming a true Utopia, thus conferring transformational potential on human memory.Bradford, Clare, et al. "'Radiant with Possibility': Communities and Utopianism." New World Orders in Contemporary Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 109-110. Hanson interprets the restriction of memory as totalitarian and argues that Lowry demonstrates the emancipatory potential of memory in The Giver.Hanson, Carter F. "The Utopian Function of Memory in Lois Lowry's the Giver." Extrapolation, vol. 50, 2009, pp. 45+. Gale Literature Resource Center; Gale. Triplett and Han suggest that Jonas's role as receiver of memory, allowing him a deeper understanding of his societal and cultural context, demonstrates the validity of suspicious methods of reading that attempt to obtain deeper rather than surface meanings.Triplett, C. C., and John J. Han. "Unmasking the Deception: The Hermeneutic of Suspicion in Lois Lowry's the Giver." Edited by John J. Han, C. C. Triplett, and Ashley G. Anthony. McFarland & Company Publishing, Jefferson, NC, 2018, pp. 120-121.
Religion Bradford et al. suggest The Givers depiction of Christmas at the novel's end implies that an ideal community is in part represented by a family Christmas, therefore situating the novel as conservative.Bradford, Clare, et al. "'Radiant with Possibility': Communities and Utopianism." New World Orders in Contemporary Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 110. Graeme Wend-Walker, an academic, analyzed the then-trilogy in 2013 through a post-secular lens and suggested that removing religion entirely from human society and lives could diminish humanity's capacity for accepting differences rather than providing for human liberation as some may assume.Wend-Walker, Graeme. "On the Possibility of Elsewhere: A Postsecular Reading of Lois Lowry's Giver Trilogy." Children's Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 2, 2013, p. 139. Countering Bradford's claim, which would suggest that the novel is conservative rather than transformative due to its religious imagery and undertones, Wend-Walker's post-secular reading suggests that the novel explores the ambiguity between the secular and religious binary which provides it progressive potential by allowing for the transformative potential of the spiritual.Wend-Walker, Graeme. "On the Possibility of Elsewhere: A Postsecular Reading of Lois Lowry's Giver Trilogy." Children's Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 2, 2013, p. p. 141.
Color Susan G. Lea has emphasized that sameness is crucial to the world of The Giver, and furthermore that their monochromatic vision creates a color blindness within the community that cannot be aware of the effects of the absence of color.Lea, Susan G. "Seeing Beyond Sameness: Using the Giver to Challenge Colorblind Ideology." Children's Literature in Education, vol. 37, no. 1, 2006, pp. 51-67, p. 57. She likens the lack of difference and literal color blindness of The Givers community with color blind attitudes that act as if racial difference does not exist, and suggests that the book shows the way that colorblindness erases people of color and their experiences through their lack of visibility.Lea, Susan G. "Seeing Beyond Sameness: Using the Giver to Challenge Colorblind Ideology." Children's Literature in Education, vol. 37, no. 1, 2006, pp. 60-61. Kyoungmin and Lee examine Jonas's growing ability to see color rather than the lack of color in his community and argue that his selfhood grows as his memory and perception of color grow.Kyoung-Min, Han, and Yonghwa Lee. "The Philosophical and Ethical Significance of Color in Lois Lowry's the Giver." The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 42, no. 3, 2018. Literature Online, ProQuest Central, Research Library, . pp. 338-339. They suggest that Jonas's full perception of color at the end is what allows him to choose to travel elsewhere as an autonomous agent in comparison to others in his community.Kyoung-Min, Han, and Yonghwa Lee. "The Philosophical and Ethical Significance of Color in Lois Lowry's the Giver." The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 42, no. 3, 2018. Literature Online, ProQuest Central, Research Library, . pp. 340-341.
Eugenics and gene editing