The Giver

What is the ideal society that you can imagine? Would you like to be happy? Does a society with no war, no disease, no pain or suffering appeal to you? Would you like to have someone else choose a very compatible mate for you and not have to worry about dating? How would you like a job that is guaranteed and is enjoyable and fits your interests and personality? The Giver is about such a society. What is the trade-off? What is missing in the people’s lives? The Giver is a very thought-provoking book. Jonas lives in this community. His thought his childhood was delightful. However, at age 12, he knows he will be assigned a job. He is apprehensive about the prospect. What does he really want to do? He is not sure. Everyone in the community is assigned an occupation that suits his or her abilities. In a special ceremony, children who turn 12 years old in a given year are grouped together. He sits in the auditorium and watches and listens as all the other children in his age group are assigned jobs. Jonas is the only one left without an assignment. Is something wrong? At the end of the ceremony, he is finally called up and told he is to be a “Receiver”. This is the highest honor. He is to be trained by the Giver. The Giver is the only one in the society that has any sense of history; he is the depository of memories. The others live only in the present. The Giver is to transfer his memories of the human race to Jonas, for the Giver is old and tired and needs to be replaced. This society is one of conformity. “Sameness” is fostered and rewarded. All the houses are identical. Haircuts, dress and activities are strictly regimented. Everyone sees grayness; no one even sees colors. Only the separate job assignments differentiate the members. They are told how to act; they are told how to live. Everyone takes a pill to keep all passion at bay. Only superficial discussions of one’s feelings are allowed; only certain feelings are appropriate. The people know vaguely about “Elsewhere”, the outside world, but they stay in the Community and do as they are told. When Jonas starts receiving memories from the Giver, he experiences pain and suffering but also love and freedom of choice. He also begins to see the world in color. He is told he can lie about his training and not tell anyone what he is experiencing. Jonas is careful of what he says at home now. When he is asked if he dreams, he says “no”, because his dreams would not be acceptable. He does not tell them that he has stopped taking the pill to suppress passion. His feelings and emotions grow, and he tries to hide these from his family and the others in the Community. The Giver is the only person who knows what he is going through. Jonas thinks the other people in the Community tell the truth about their jobs. Then one day, the Giver allows him to watch a video recording of his father at work with his job taking care of infants. Jonas had always thought his Dad liked the infants that were in his care. This view was reinforced since his father brought home an infant named Gabriel who needed some extra care. Gabriel was not learning to sleep through the night; he was different than the other infants in the ward. If he did not learn to sleep through the night he would be RELEASED. Jonas soothes the boy to sleep by acting as Giver and sending the child peaceful thoughts. The child does not sleep when he is in the new infant ward, however. Jonas learns that Gabriel is to be RELEASED. In the infant ward, twins have been born. Twins are not allowed in the Community. Only one of the twins can be kept. The other is be RELEASED. Jonas watches as his father weighs each of the twins and sets aside the smaller of the two. Then his father calmly injects the smaller twin in the head with a lethal chemical. The boy dies. Jonas is devastated. He had always looked up to his father. Jonas now knows what RELEASED means. He had thought that those who were RELEASED, including the disabled and the elderly went to a heavenly place in another community. Jonas now knows that RELEASED means death. Shocked and scared, Jonas knows that his father has been lying to everyone about what he does. Is everyone lying about his or her work? Jonas is disillusioned and decides to leave the Community, something that is forbidden. He realizes that the Community is a horrible place; it is a dystopia, not a Utopia. Jonas hoards some leftover food (all leftover food must be put out in front of each house) and prepares for the right opportunity. The Giver helps him escape. He escapes with Gabriel and is pursued by helicopters. Freezing and nearly starving, they reach a hill and look down upon a lit up house below. A family is sitting cozily in a living room with a lovely Christmas tree. The scene is a memory that Jonah had received from the Giver. Is this real or is it just a memory? Are Jonah and Gabriel safe in “Elsewhere” or are they dead? What information is kept from us in today’s world? It is easy to see distortions of truth in our media. Misinformation is spread rapidly though the Internet as well as television, and, probably, our newspapers. We see many different cultures in the world, and they all have their version of reality. Medical doctors often give tranquilizers and antidepressants to dull patients’ emotions. There is some parallel here to the pill that every 12 year-old child in the Community must start to take daily to get rid of passionate feelings. Does not great art and music need passion and intense feelings to be inspired?

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars The Giver tells a story of a soon to be Twelve named Jonas who lives in a bleak community with no color, rights, feelings, and choice of life. Jonas gets the assignment as Receiver of Memory, a job that is of great honor in the community. He receives a packet telling him about his assignment and what he is supposed to do. He can lie. That was one of the things the packet said. He could lie to anyone about anything. That terrifying thought made him realize that his life could be a lie. Why I liked it: I like this book because it had deep places in the book and other places where you could relate to the book. I liked the dystopian feel and setting of the book. It was one of those books where you can read it multiple times and not get bored of it. A reason I disliked it was because sometimes when I read about the stirrings and dreams he had, it felt a little weird or inappropriate. What Type of Reader: I would recommend this book to readers who like dystopian books. Teenagers and young adults would love this book. It is a very good discussion book and one you will love.

Before there was The Hunger Games, or the world of new Young Adult genre selections we often see today with beautiful and appealing covers that enthralls our imagination and tends to our emotions, there was The Giver. It has been a book of its own caliber. One that tends to the human spirit and intellect with a sophisticated approach to society and the individual. If you read this book in childhood, it will stay with you for the rest of your life. If you read this book in adulthood, it will blow your whole view of life wide open. As one of the Newbery Medal Award winners for the most oustanding contribution to children's literature, the author deserves some mention. Lois Lowry is absolutely one of those writers of simple genius, a seemingly effortless genius. This is what she says about the book (from Random House Website). "I will say that the whole concept of memory is one that interests me a great deal. I'm not sure why that is, but I've always been fascinated by the thought of what memory is and what it does and how it works and what we learn from it. And so I think probably that interest of my own and that particular subject was the origin, one of many, of The Giver." A seemingly utopian society for the purpose of the greater good. Every year is significantly structured to promote the appropriate and standardized growth of each child. At the age of twelve, all children are given their 'adult' places/careers/duties in society. They are taught that questioning and having existential wonderings are 'stirrings,' and should be treated by the use of pills. Their lives are built around the concept of conformation. Conform or be 'appealed.' Mostly everything becomes an automatic and possibly even meaningless gesture. This book is about Jonas's journey through this society. All events in the book matter, and every page is significant to the transformation of the story. At twelve, Jonas is chosen with the responsibility of being the new Receiver of Memory. How does one bear the burden of memory of the whole human experience? The agony of war. Disease. Loss and pain. Even the heights of human existence: human acheivement, freedom, music, color, and the power of love. He, alone, keeps these memories on behalf of his community. He isn't to share them with a single person. The reason being that no-one, supposedly, wants to experience the whole range of human emotion. Additionally, this limitation on the society as a whole means that if people cannot remember things then they cannot remember the pain that comes with life as well, holding people in ignorant bliss. The ending felt much like being vaguely abandoned. There is a sense of ambiguity about the ending when you get to it. The Giver is the first in the series of three book, the second being Gathering Blue and the third being The Messenger. Just with any series, the placement of such a vaguely placed ending probably is meant to lead us into the next books in the series for us to find out more. Here is a word from the author about the end, for she knows best why that was accomplished in that way, and it will probably put things into perspective for you, the read, as to how to approach the end the way Lois Lowry might have intended it. "Many kids want a more specific ending to The Giver. Some write, or ask me when they see me, to spell it out exactly. And I don't do that. And the reason is because The Giver is many things to many different people. People bring to it their own complicated sense of beliefs and hopes and dreams and fears and all of that. So I don't want to put my own feelings into it, my own beliefs, and ruin that for people who create their own endings in their minds." I have my own personal relationship to this book, and it has become a strong part of me. It's made its mark on me. It's truly one of those book you have to read in your lifetime. I absolutely loved it. I will be coming back to it throughout life, it's just one of those timeless books for both children and adults.

Fascinating book, and so easy to read.

Exclusive interciew was a good addition. Cover was quality and shipping was fast enough.

I read this book because it was recommended to me by a young man of my acquaintance, who'd read it for school. I read it, and was amazed by the book, which has a very " Brave New World " sort of feel, but the book became ever-so-much better, when I examined it from a Buddhist perspective. **SPOILER ALERT** The story begins in an unnamed community, in which the people are living predictable, ordered lives, under a system called Sameness which, as the story unfolds, is revealed more and more to be an illusion (something which in Buddhism is called Samsara). Under Sameness, the community members go about their daily lives, under strict guidelines for behaviour, clothing, and possessions. Each member undergoes annual transitory rites, designating them an age-category, from Newchild, to One, Two, and so-on, until the rank of Twelve. Each stage of their graduation is marked by new clothing, mandated hairstyles, or new possessions, which are also recycled to the upcoming generation, when custom requires it. Age twelve is the point at which each community member is assigned his/her job, and begins training therein. The story itself centers on a twelve-year-old boy named Jonas, who's been born with a noticeable difference in eye-colour, which marks him as special, from the beginning of the story. In the early part of the story, he begins to notice things about the world around him, which hint at truths beyond those most can see, and he has no words to explain them to his friends. In the course of his passage rites, Jonas is selected as the new Receiver of Memories'a highly-honoured role in the community, which he later finds out are the community's attempt to stifle the truth about the nature and existence of suffering in the past. Memories are transferred to him from the Giver'the previous Receiver'of hunger, pain, death, violence, and Jonas begins to see the world around him very differently. He sees the violence of death in a childhood game of War, which is'in the community'only an incomplete memory, disbursed into the community, presumably when Jonas's predecessor, a girl named Rosemary, kills herself, unable to bear the truth of all the pain and suffering. Rosemary's death, though, reveals to the Giver a couple of things about his role (He is a Bodhisattva, delaying his own Liberation, for the good of the community.): 1) The Receiver's role is to guard the community against the truth of suffering. 2) With Rosemary's death, the potential for Liberation-for-All (Nirvana/Nibbana) is revealed to the Giver (in memories of war, revealed in children's games), and he waits to find the next Receiver (Maitreya/Future Buddha). Jonas, the story's Future Buddha, is exposed to the truth, as was Siddhartha, and recognizes the extremes between the mindless existence of the community-members, and the asceticism represented in the life of the Receiver. With the Giver's help, he comes to an understanding that there's a Middle Way, in which the memories reserved by those filling his role, can be returned to the people, if the Receiver escapes the community. Giver and Receiver hatch a plan to liberate the community from delusion, and Jonas escapes with Gabriel, a Newchild, into realms beyond the safety and security of the community. In the end, however, he finds that the only truth beyond the Samsara of Sameness is death (through hypothermia). His last act reveals his greatest compassion and Awakening, as he transfers memories of love, warmth, Christmas, family, a sleigh-ride, lights, and a vague memory of Christmas music, to Gabriel, as they lay on the ground, freezing to death. Jonas's memory of music suggests that the Giver has also died, and that his memories of music have been disbursed to the community.

Good a story

Very nice book and also a good quality book, i recomend it to people who like science fiction.