The Giver

The Giver

File:The Giver Cover.gif
Author	Lois Lowry
Cover artist	Cliff Nielsen
Language	English
Genre	Soft science fiction, Dystopian fiction, Social Science
Publisher	Bantam Books
Publication date	1993
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	179 p. (paperback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-553-57133-8 (paperback edition)
LC Class	PZ7.L9673 Gi 1993
Followed by	Gathering Blue

The Giver is a dystopian children's novel by Lois Lowry. It is set in a society which is at first presented as a utopian society and gradually appears more and more dystopian. The novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth year of his life. The society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to "Sameness," a plan that has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the position of "Receiver of Memory," the person who stores all the past memories of the time before Sameness, in case they are ever needed to aid in decisions that others lack the experience to make. When Jonas meets the previous receiver—The "Giver"—he is confused in many ways. The Giver is also able to break some rules, such as turning off the speaker and lying to people of the community. As Jonas receives the memories from the Giver, he discovers the power of knowledge. The people in his community are happy because they do not know of a better life, but the knowledge of what they are missing out on could create major chaos. He faces a dilemma: Should he stay with the community, his family living a shallow life without love, color, choices, and knowledge, or should he run away to where he can live a full life?

Despite controversy and criticism that the book's subject material is inappropriate for young children, The Giver won the 1994 Newbery Medal and has sold more than 5.3 million copies. In Australia, the United States, and Canada, it is a part of many middle school reading lists, but it is also on many challenged book lists and appeared on the American Library Association's list of most challenged books of the 1990s.

The novel forms a loose quartet with three other books set in the same future era: Gathering Blue (2000) and Messenger (2004) and Son (2012).

Summary

Setting

The society in which Jonas lives remains harmonious by assigning jobs to each individual according to a laborious evaluation of their skill, by matching up husbands and wives based on personality to balance out each other, and only allowing two children, one male and one female per family unit. Children are born to designated "Birth mothers" and then family units can apply for children. If the family unit applies for the maximum allowed number of two, the family unit will be augmented to fill out into a nuclear family by being issued one boy and one girl. This is to keep the genders even. After family units have served the purpose of raising the children in a stable environment, they cease to exist; the parents proceed to housing facility for childless adults, and the children become involved in their work and start mono-generational families of their own, forgetting their parents as they grow older. The Community maintains this process using pills which suppress certain emotions, mainly romantic love, which they refer to as "Stirrings".

All the land near the Community and around the other, similar communities clustered about the nearby river has been flattened to aid agriculture and transportation. Although the community has a salmon hatchery, all other animals have apparently been removed. Citizens' only exposure to the notion of animals is through the presence of stuffed animals, however, society has no understanding of what they represent, believing them to be simple, non-existent objects. The word "animal" is used to describe a foolish person, with no understanding of the connection between the two. A vaguely described system of weather control is used so that the weather remains constant. It is implied that genetic engineering has been used extensively to manipulate human beings so that they are all colorblind, and physically conform with Sameness. They even have the same dark eyes, as only Jonas (and a few other exceptions: Gabriel, The Giver, a female Five named Katharine, and Rosemary) is seen as different because of their light, pale eyes.

The Community is run by a Committee of Elders that assigns each 12-year-old the job—based on interests and aptitudes—he or she will perform for the rest of his or her productive working life, with a ceremony known as the Ceremony of Twelve, where all Elevens (eleven-year-olds) turn into Twelves on the same day. Its people are bound by an extensive set of rules touching every aspect of life, which if violated require a simple but somewhat ceremonious apology. In some cases, violating the rules is "winked at": older siblings invariably teach their younger brothers and sisters how to ride a bicycle before the children are officially permitted to learn the skill. If a member of the community has committed serious infractions three times before, or commits an especially serious infraction, he or she may be punished by "Release". "Release" is a procedure which is hinted at by the characters throughout the book. Originally, it is thought of as a process where the "Released" is sent to live outside of the community (known as Elsewhere in the book), but still in a good place. Eventually, it is revealed to be a system of lethal injection, employed not only as punishment, but also to ensure a monotony of means by which death occurs, which include elders who have lived past their expectancies, newborns who are considered inadequate, or anyone who applies for Release simply out of dissatisfaction with the community.

Plot

The book focuses on a twelve-year-old boy named Jonas residing in an immaculately-organized, tightly-run, but strict utopian society known as a Community, where eccentricities in behavior, appearance, or personality are strongly outlawed and opposed. Nearing an age where he will be selected for the position that he will hold in the Community throughout adulthood, Jonas is selected for the role as the Receiver of Memory, the keeper of all ancient memories in the Community before the start of the strict system through which the world is now run. Under the guidance of the older Receiver-of-Memory, the Giver, Jonas is transferred memories that had taken place years prior to the events of the story, involving color, emotion, freedom, and pain, which have since been drained entirely from the Community. Through the Giver, Jonas receives stunning wisdom of the true secret runnings of the Community, including secrets remaining heavily-guarded from its inhabitants, and the boy starts to yearn for the happier world which had been available during the past. He is exposed to shocking footage of his father, a Nurturer, injecting a baby twin with poison (as a means of living up to the Community's mandatory standards of population control) and is shocked by the true intentions and behaviors of the residents in the Community, how their utter inability to accept pain forced their hunger for a Receiver of Memory. The Giver informs Jonas that it is up to him to help restore freedom to the world, and therefore he must flee the town late at night with the other closest option for a Receiver; a baby boy named Gabriel, who Jonas's family had been sheltering for the past few months, so the Giver may convince everyone that they have died so they may once again accept the burden of the pains of their own memories and everything can be restored to how it had formerly been. Jonas must escape to Elsewhere, an unknown land located beyond the boundaries of the Community, and the pair must endure through the freezing cold together, just as Jonas "thinks he hears singing" (a reference to a past memory he'd received).

Main characters

• Jonas – An Eleven year old who later becomes a Twelve. He becomes the next Receiver of Memory in his community. He has a sister, Lily, and a mother and a father.
• The Giver – The most important person in the community. He can experience pain and love, and can see color, unlike those around him. His daughter, Rosemary, was the one selected to be the Receiver ten years before Jonas was selected. Rosemary asked to be released, and so that assignment was considered a failure. No one in the community can ever speak her name again, nor can it be used again for another child; this is considered the highest degree of disgrace.
• Lily – A Seven who later becomes an Eight. She is Jonas' sister. She "loves" children.
• Gabriel (Gabe) – A baby. When he becomes a One, he is given an additional year to be properly nurtured, due to his inability to sleep soundlessly. Jonas' father and family unit take care of him sometimes. He has pale eyes like Jonas'. He was scheduled to be released, but Jonas runs away with him in the end.
• Asher – Jonas's best friend; an Eleven, later a Twelve. Asher is a carefree, happy boy but tends to find himself facing trouble. He is assigned to be the Assistant Director of Recreation.
• Jonas's father – A Nurturer. He cares a lot about Gabriel, so he manages to give him an extra year to develop properly. He takes care of the new-children during the day. He is a shy and quiet man who is responsible for the physical and emotional needs of new-children.
• Jonas's mother – A judge who works for the Department of Justice.
• Fiona – an Eleven, later a Twelve; one of Jonas' friends. She is assigned to be the Caretaker of the Old. She appears in Jonas' dream that begins his Stirrings.

Literary significance and criticism

The critical reception of Lowry's work has been polarized. On one hand, The Giver has become something of a canonical work among educators who believe that young adult audiences respond best to contemporary literature. These teachers postulate that "teenagers need a separate body of literature written to speak directly to the adolescent experience [...] and plots that revolve around realistic, contemporary topics". According to this view, a "classics-only" curriculum can stunt a developing reader's appetite for reading, though there are naturally teachers who argue the opposite viewpoint, and press to keep older works on the reading lists.

Lowry's novel has also found a home in "City Reads" programs, library-sponsored reading clubs on city-wide or larger scales. Waukesha County, Dane County and Milwaukee County, Wisconsin chose to read The Giver, for example, as did Middletown, Connecticut; Bloomington, Illinois; Valparaiso, Indiana; Rochester, Minnesota; Central Valley, New York; Centre County, Pennsylvania; Montgomery County, Maryland and others.

Some adult reviewers writing for adults have commented that the story is not likely to stand up to the sort of probing literary criticism used in "serious" circles. For instance, 50 children are born each year by the group of "birthmothers" who each have 3 children – therefore 17 new "birthmothers" are required each year out of 25 girls, even though this profession is looked down upon in the book. Karen Ray, writing in the New York Times, detects "occasional logical lapses", but quickly adds that the book "is sure to keep older children reading." Young adult fiction author Debra Doyle was more critical stating that "Personal taste aside, The Giver fails the Plausibility Test", and that "Things are the way they are (in the novel) because The Author is Making A Point; things work out the way they do because The Author's Point Requires It.".

Natalie Babbitt of the Washington Post was more forgiving, calling Lowry's work "a warning in narrative form", saying:

The story has been told before in a variety of forms—Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 comes to mind—but not, to my knowledge, for children. It's well worth telling, especially by a writer of Lowry's great skill. If it is exceedingly fragile—if, in other words, some situations do not survive that well-known suspension of disbelief—well, so be it. The Giver has things to say that cannot be said too often, and I hope there will be many, many young people who will be willing to listen.

Awards, nominations, and recognition

Lowry won many awards for her work on The Giver, including the following:

• The 1994 Newbery Medal
• The 1994 Regina Medal
• The 1996 William Allen White Award
• American Library Association listings for "Best Book for Young Adults", "ALA Notable Children's Book", and "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000."
• A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book
• Booklist Editors' Choice
• A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

A 2004 study found that it was a common read-aloud book for sixth-graders in schools in San Diego County, California. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association named the book one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children." It was one of the "Top 100 Chapter Books" of all time in a 2012 poll by School Library Journal.

Adaptations

Oregon Children's Theatre (Portland, Oregon) premiered a stage adaptation of The Giver by Eric Coble in March 2006. Subsequent productions of Coble's one-hour script have been presented by The Coterie Theatre (Missouri), First Stage (Wisconsin), Nashville Children's Theatre (Tennessee), People's Light and Theatre (Pennsylvania), Theatre of Youth (Buffalo, New York), and Stages Repertory (Texas), and others throughout the U.S..

In the fall of 1994, actor Bill Cosby and his ASIS Productions film company established an agreement with Lancit Media Productions to adapt The Giver to film. In the years following, members of the partnership changed and the production team grew in size, but little motion was seen toward making the film. At one point, screenwriter Ed Neumeier was signed to create the screenplay. Later, Neumeier was replaced by Todd Alcott and Walden Media became the central production company.

Diana Basmajian adapted the novel to full-length play format, and Prime Stage Theatre staged a production of it in 2006.

A film adaptation has been discussed for quite some time. Director David Yates is set to helm the movie and Academy Award winners Dustin Hoffman and Jeff Bridges have been linked to the film. As announced, casting began in January 2012.

Actor Ron Rifkin reads the text for the audio book edition.

The Lyric Opera of Kansas City and the Minnesota Opera co-commissioned and staged a new opera based on the novel in January 2012 which will be performed at Minnesota Opera in April 2012.

Influences

• American band from North Carolina, Jonas Sees in Color chose their name based on this book, citing the story's protagonist's inability to see in color until he takes on the responsibilities of his village as inspiration.

External links

• Lois Lowry's Newbery acceptance speech
• The Giver study guide, themes, quotes, teacher resources