REVIEW: FICTION, FANTASY, AND YA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lowry, Lois. 2002. The Giver. Westminster, MD: Dell Laurel-Leaf. 
ISBN 0440237688
PLOT SUMMARY
The story unfolds through the eyes of a twelve-year old youth, Jonas. He lives in a futuristic community where there are no feelings, colors, or choices. There is no privacy. All people are the same. There is no uniqueness in individual personalities. Members of the community can apply for a spouse and the elders make a decision regarding their compatibility. Each couple can adopt one male and one female child. At age nine, the children receive a bicycle. The children are observed very carefully by a committee. When they turn twelve they are selected for a profession according to their interests—birth mother, engineer, doctor, geriatric care-giver, recreation specialist, nurturer, etc. The birthmothers give birth to all the children in the community. The nurturers take care of the children until they are one year old. As children grow and marry, their parents move in a unit called Childless Adults. As the adults grow old, they move to the House of the Old where they are taken care of. Individuals that do not follow the rules, people that are very old, children that are flawed get “released” to “Elsewhere”. If twins are born, the twin with the lower birth weight is “released”. The citizens think they are sent to other communities. They are actually murdered but people do not use that word. At a certain age, when the youth start having feelings of wanting, they have to take a pill everyday for the rest of their lives.
When Jonas turns twelve he is given a special assignment. He is chosen to be the “Receiver of Memory” in his community because he has special powers. A “Receiver” is the keeper of memories of way back and beyond when there was color, war, hatred, and choices.
Jonas has to go for training to the “Giver” who has been the “Receiver” for many years and is getting old. As soon as the “Giver” transfers the memories to Jonas, he loses those memories himself. The “Giver” starts out by giving Jonas many happy memories of sun, snow, and color. After a while, he starts giving Jonas memories of being hurt and in pain. The “Giver” is sometimes unable to “train” Jonas because of the pain of all the memories that he is carrying. The “Giver” and Jonas become close as a result of their daily contact. Subsequently, Jonas receives memories about war and hatred. Even though he goes through painful feelings, he also experiences the feelings of love and joy. He changes and starts questioning the way his community works. Before Jonas was chosen, there was a girl that had been selected to be the “Receiver”. However, she could not handle the memories, and she asked to be released. This reverted all past memories to the community and made everyone anxious.
Around the same time, Jonas’ father brings a baby home at night to nurture. His name is Gabriel. Gabriel cries a lot at night. Jonas helps his family by keeping Gabriel with him at night and soothing him with happy memories. He becomes attached to Gabriel. There is a talk of “releasing” Gabriel because he cries all night. Jonas is curious to find out where Gabriel will go when he is “released”. The “Giver” shows a video of a “Release” to Jonas. Jonas is devastated to find out that “release” means death and that his father murders little babies regularly.
The “Giver” encourages Jonas to escape. He tells Jonas he will stay and help his people manage the feelings that will be released in the community when Jonas leaves. Jonas escapes and takes Gabriel with him.
Jonas goes through many obstacles to get to the land where there is color, animals, snow, and sunlight. He finally sees the sled from his memories and senses that everything will be fine when he goes down the hill on the sled.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
This book has most aspects of futuristic fiction. The story is written with the viewpoint of a young person. The character deals with emotions that are important to young adults and makes a worthy accomplishment in the end. The motif includes other worlds, heroism with a quest, and individuals with special powers. The hero enters the adult world with exploration and possibility.
Lowry lulls the reader into thinking that a structured Utopian society where there is no fear, hate, and war would be ideal to live in. However, as the story progresses one realizes that one has to give up personal freedom, individuality, the ability to choose, and the ability to feel.
The author suggests that Jonas is different because he has lighter eyes than the others in the community. When Jonas is playing with the apple, he notices that the apple looks strange to him. As the story develops, there is evidence to suggest that Jonas has a special ability to see “beyond”.
Everyone in the community is forced to use precise language. When Jonas’ friend Asher was three years old, he mixed up words. He said “smack” when he should have said “snack”. “The discipline wand, in the hand of the Childcare worker, whistled as it came down across Asher’s hands. Asher whimpered, cringed, and corrected himself instantly. “Snack,” he whispered.” However, when it suits the elders in the community, the word “release” is used instead of murder to conceal the true meaning to make the act sound benign.
The citizens have to take a pill when they get to an age when they begin experience the “wanting” or stirrings”. Jonas enjoys the thoughts of desire, warmth, and love. He decides to stop taking his pill. In addition, Jonas’ extrasensory perception deepens as he undergoes training as a “Receiver” of memories. This unleashes many positive and negative feelings in him. Lowry skillfully demonstrates that positive feelings such as joy, pleasure, and beauty come with negative feelings such as anger, sadness, pain, and suffering.
REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
School Library Journal, 05/01/1993
Gr 6-9-- In a complete departure from her other novels, Lowry has written an intriguing story set in a society that is uniformly run by a Committee of Elders. Twelve-year-old Jonas's confidence in his comfortable ``normal'' existence as a member of this well-ordered community is shaken when he is assigned his life's work as the Receiver. 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, in which children are promoted not to another grade but to another stage in their life, 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, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
BookList, 04/15/1993
/*STARRED REVIEW*/
This is a multi-book review. SEE the title "Peter" for next imprint and review text.
Gr. 6-9. Lowry once again turns in a new direction; this time to the future. Jonas lives in a world that many of us have longed for. There is no war, poverty, or family turmoil, and so no fear, no hardship, no everyday discontent, no long-term terror. Jonas lives with his father, who's a Nurturer at the childcare center; his mother, who works at the Department of Justice; and his sister, Lily, who is a Six. Jonas himself is soon to be a Twelve, an important age because each year at the annual Ceremony all the 12-years-olds in the community receive their life assignments from the Elders. Jonas is named to the most prestigious and unusual job in the community--the Receiver of Memory. There is only one Receiver, and when he grows old, he trains his successor. Jonas is both puzzled and frightened by his job, which requires him to receive all the memories of their world and the land that lies beyond their community, Elsewhere.
Like the falling of night, the story's mood changes almost imperceptibly. Readers lulled by the warmth and safety of the community will find themselves quite surprised as the darkness enfolds them. What the former Receiver, now the Giver, has to tell Jonas rocks the boy's sense of self and turns inside out the life he has known. At first, the Giver offers benign memories--of snow, sunshine, and color, things that existed before the community went to Sameness--and the boy grieves for what has been lost. But soon Jonas receives memories of pain and death, and then he is torn. Perhaps his community's decision to shelter the citizens from the world's sorrow has been correct. Yet by going to Sameness, the community has also eliminated all possibilities for choice and, finally, for happiness.
The simplicity and directness of Lowry's writing force readers to grapple with their own thoughts about this dichotomy; though it is clear what the right answer is (and, at times, the narrative lacks subtlety in insisting upon that answer), the allure of a life without pain will give even the least philosophical of readers something to ponder. Lowry forces the point for Jonas when he learns that baby Gabriel, whom the family had been raising, is to be Released. Jonas had always thought Release simply meant going Elsewhere, but now he knows the term's real meaning: the baby will be killed. So to save Gabriel, and with the Giver's help, Jonas decides to flee to Elsewhere. Lowry heightens the tension as Jonas and Gabriel dodge search parties and airplanes, face starvation, and become weaker seeking a better place.
Lowry's ending is the most unsatisfying element of the book. Jonas and Gabriel, freezing, starving, very near death, finally see the lights and hear the music of Elsewhere. But have they arrived? Or, as some (mainly adults, perhaps) will wonder--have the children died? With the book's tension level raised so high, readers will want closure, not ambiguity. Anti-Utopian novels have an enduring appeal. This one makes an especially good introduction to the genre because it doesn't load the dice by presenting the idea of a community structured around safety as totally negative. There's a distinctly appealing comfort in sameness that kids--especially junior high kids--will recognize. Yet the choice is clear. Sameness versus freedom, happiness at the risk of pain. Something to talk about. ((Reviewed Apr. 15, 1993)) -- Ilene Cooper. Booklist, published by the American Library Association.
Kirkus Reviews, 03/01/1993
In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility. As Jonas approaches the ``Ceremony of Twelve,'' he wonders what his adult ``Assignment'' will be. Father, a ``Nurturer,'' cares for ``newchildren''; Mother works in the ``Department of Justice''; but Jonas's admitted talents suggest no particular calling. In the event, he is named ``Receiver,'' to replace an Elder with a unique function: holding the community's memories--painful, troubling, or prone to lead (like love) to disorder; the Elder (``The Giver'') now begins to transfer these memories to Jonas. The process is deeply disturbing; for the first time, Jonas learns about ordinary things like color, the sun, snow, and mountains, as well as love, war, and death: the ceremony known as ``release'' is revealed to be murder. Horrified, Jonas plots escape to ``Elsewhere,'' a step he believes will return the memories to all the people, but his timing is upset by a decision to release a newchild he has come to love. Ill-equipped, Jonas sets out with the baby on a desperate journey whose enigmatic conclusion resonates with allegory: Jonas may be a Christ figure, but the contrasts here with Christian symbols are also intriguing. Wrought with admirable skill--the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly provocative novel. (Fiction. 12+) Copyright 2003, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Publishers Weekly, 02/15/1993
In the ``ideal'' world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are ``released''--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also ``released,'' but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers. Ages 12-14. (Apr.)
CONNECTIONS
Use fantasy books in the classroom to practice reading. Ask students to write their own fantasy story.
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