About this title: Set in a completely controlled, soothingly pleasant society, THE GIVER takes readers into a world free of such things as conflict, hate, and disappointment. At age 12 all residents are given their Assignment, or their adult role in the community--some are Nurturers who care for the young children, others are Laborers, still others are Doctors, and ...
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Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 192 p. Readers Circle (Laurel-Leaf). Audience: Children/juvenile; Young adult. read more
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean text, some corner folds. Spine creased. Cover wear. Ship daily (wrapped carefully + free domestic dc). Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 192 p. 21st Century Reference. Audience: Children/juvenile; Young adult. read more
Description: Used-Acceptable. Cover shows wear. Corners show creases. Front or back cover creased. Slight rubbing and bumping damage to corners and edges. Cover shows some scuffing. This book ships in padded mailer via USPS. read more
Description: Good. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 192 p. 21st Century Reference. Intended for a juvenile audience. Intended for a young adult/teenage audience. Good read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Date Published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780440219071ISBN:0440219078
Description: A good reading copy only. Previous owners name inscribed inside front. Book has tanning or browning due to normal aging process. -, Mass Market PaperBack, Good / read more
"I initially bought this book to read to a 10 year old boy, fortunately I read it myself first. I found it extremely interesting and thought provoking. I found the content quite sinister and, whereas, the blurb on the back lead me to believe it was for children, I wouldn't recommend it for any person under 16 years.
"In The Giver, Lois Lowry's Newbery-award winning novel set in an alternative future at an unknown date, a young boy named Jonas comes of age to be selected to be the next Receiver of Memory during an annual ceremony in which all 12-year-old boys and girls are given their life-long Assignments, more familiar to us as careers. Jonas soon meets the Giver and his understanding of the very foundations of his world crumbles as he begins to receive memories of experiences long forgotten by his community, memories such as snow, sledding, sailing, war, love, Christmas and more. The Giver shares themes with other classic or well-known dystopian tales, and like these same classics, The Giver also has its anti-hero, its runner.
This Ceremony of Twelve occurs at the midpoint of the book, however. The first few chapters up to the Ceremony introduce readers to Jonas, his family, his friends, their roles, the way their future/alternative community functions and administers its laws. At first, this world seems idyllic. The family eats breakfast and dinner at the table every night and discusses their feelings, the dreams they have had the night before, the things and thoughts that cause them pause or burden them. Everyone either goes to school or to his/her Assignment every day. Everyone is cared for, even the newchildren and the elderly, which are cared in facilities like hospitals and group homes respectively. The elderly only await their Release. For Christians, this setting is ideal; after all, a strong society is based on strong families.What more could anyone ask for?
This world, however, is anything but idyllic, Jonas soon learns as he begins to receive the collective memories of the community. These memories are stored within the mind of The Giver of Memory, until they have all been imparted, at which time Jonas will take his place and become the next Giver of Memory, the only person who advises the Committee of Elders so the Committee can make informed decisions when necessity eclipses their own personal limited experiences. Once all the memories are given to Jonas, the elderly Giver will then be Released. Jonas learns, as do readers, that the families in his world are not biological families, and his world has been stripped of the pain and joy of the human experience and the freedom to choose one's fate. Jonas' world is sterile, wrought with Sameness.
Both Jonas and readers begin to understand, as Jonas gains wisdom through the memories given to him, that their community functions but is missing those things that make each human life unique and interesting. Through these memories, Jonas learns about the joy of sledding, the pleasure of snow, the pain of frostbite and broken bones, the comfort of biological families, the experience of longing and love, and more. After receiving the memory of a war-torn battlefield, Jonas witnesses his friends playing a game of war, and Jonas frantically tries to stop them because they do not understand the horror of the battlefield, but they are confused and perhaps horrified by Jonas' response. It is at this point that Jonas and the reader realizes the gulf which has suddenly appeared between him and his friends because of his new consciousness.
This gulf only widens as more memories are transferred to Jonas. Jonas and readers learn that memories are more objects than individual memories. If a receiver's memories are released, by death or distance, they don't go back to the Giver, they go to where memories existed before Receivers, and every person in the community experiences them. Just such an event occurred 10 years before and caused great burden and pain for every member of the community when a Receiver asked for Release and administered the injection herself. Incidentally, this Receiver, Jonas and the reader learn, was the daughter of the Giver, though no one, so far as Jonas understands, is supposed to know either of their birth parents in this society.
Family does not have the traditional importance in this book as it does for Western society. A family in this book is an assigned unit. No one in the family is biologically related. Children are taken from birth mothers immediately after birth and nurtured until they are ready to be given to a family unit. A family unit can have no more than two children. People must apply for a wife or husband, and for children as well. As Christian religions today believe that family is the most important foundation for a healthy society, the dissolution of the traditional family means much in this book to readers from cultures like our own.
More epiphanies await Jonas throughout the book. For example, he learns as a child that he must not lie; but on his short list of instructions as Receiver, he is told he can now lie. At first he thinks this sets him apart, although he cannot imagine why he may need to tell a lie. But then he realizes that perhaps, upon becoming Twelves, everyone is told they can lie, which immediately calls every adult he has ever known into question. If everyone is lying, what are they lying about, and who is telling the truth? What is the truth? Perceptive readers will understand how this small realization further challenges the foundations of Jonas' community.
By the end of the book, Jonas has discovered that his society has created a community without human feeling. The word "love" for the community is imprecise and questions about it should be phrased in language such as "Do you enjoy me?" or "Do you take pride in my accomplishments?" The word "love," his mother tells him near the end of the book, has become almost obsolete. Love, readers will do well to remember, is another Christian value.
As with other classic dystopian stories, The Giver also has a runner, its anti-hero who at all cost and through his own sacrifice, tries to free the community from its contrived laws and traditions.
In the last quarter of the book, Jonas and the Giver contrive a plan to force the others in the community to bear the burden of the memories Jonas is holding for them, to try to change the community. If Jonas can escape the community into Elsewhere, a vague undisclosed place at some distance from the community, the memories given to Jonas will be returned to the people once he is far enough away. The Giver, however, chooses to stay behind to help the people cope with the new, overpowering memories and the uncertainty, fear, pain, joy and social unrest they are sure to create.
The Giver's last pages, however, are ambiguous and unsatisfying. Having taken Gabriel, a newchild Jonas has come to comfort and love, Jonas' escape is uneventful, hiding by day and traveling by night. In his haste to escape with Gabe, Jonas is ill-prepared. After the planes have stopped flying over, and the road grows narrow and too bumpy for his bicycle, Jonas realizes they will soon starve if they do not find help in Elsewhere. Soon it begins to snow, and Jonas and Gabe, weak and weary from their escape, find themselves at the top of a hill with a sled, identical to the first memory the Giver gave to Jonas, and the memory fills Jonas with joy. It is downhill now, and as the sled slides through the snow, he sees lights at the bottom and thinks he hears music and people singing. It is too coincidental to be the same hill and sled in that first imparted memory; it is like a dream. Unfortunately, the ambiguity of this dream-like ending will frustrate some readers who desire confirmation that Jonas either has or has not reached Elsewhere and will be saved, and the memories he carries returned to the body of the community, forcing change.
Several themes in The Giver are reminiscent of earlier dystopian stories, including George Orwell's 1984 (1949), Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and William Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's Logan's Run (1967, film 1976). Like Big Brother in Orwell's 1984, The Giver's society also has a system of constant surveillance. Early in the b"
"This book is so good! I'm reading it right now and I left it at work. I can't stop thinking about it and I'm almost finished! I highly recomend this book to everyone who can handle a different society than ours today. Jonas lives in a small communitty that everyone takes part in. There's no rudeness, violence or anything else that could disturb the community. there are also negative things too, like less freedom. When he is about twelve years of age ("a twelve") he is chosen to be apprentice to the most important job of all. The reciever. I won't tell you anymore, but this book is one of my favorites so far."
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