The Giver

The Giver by Lois Lowry, Houghton Mifflin Company 1993

     What do you do when your entire civilization has no collective memories? Lois Lowry presents one idea: you give the collective memories to one person who remembers for everyone else.
     In this post-apocalyptic world, society is structured and organized to survive. Jonas lives with his parents, goes to school with friends, and takes his vitamins like a good child. But life begins to take on a new element when he starts to see flashes of something in his black-and-white world. Around the age of 11, Jonas goes through the Ceremony of Twelve where his skills and abilities are taken into account and, like every other child in the village, he is given the job that will be his for the rest of his life.
     As the ceremony goes on, Jonas' classmates each gain their assignments; simple and normal jobs like food worker and assistant in the childhood centers, but Jonas is given the mysterious task of Receiver of Memory.
     When he finally meets the current Receiver, Jonas is unsure what his task is. The strange old man lives in a run-down home outside the well-ordered community, makes his own food, and doesn't travel into town unless he must: a sharp contrast to what Jonas is used to, living in the town and getting food from a center.
     Over time he learns that the Giver is the Keeper of Memory, and the flashes of something Jonas has been seeing are more than just something wrong with his eyes, but color. Jonas is told the new job will bring him nothing but pain and isolation, but he finally really experiences life: happiness, love, rain, and sunshine in the memories of the community. But he also gets the memories of war, pain, and death. The Community has figured out a way to create sameness by isolating all collective memory in the mind of the Receiver of Memory; but while it protected them, the lack of memory inhibited the community's ability to experience life for real.
     Jonas begins to challenge what he's always believed, accepting that in order to experience pleasure you must also experience pain. And it is in comparing the two that you realize how powerful and affecting each is.
   Lowry's story includes concepts that may confuse younger readers, however they are presented in a way that doesn't challenge their understanding or enjoyment of the story. The Giver is aimed toward middle schoolers and has a relatable storyline, despite its post-apocalyptic setting. It is a memorable book, asking to be examined again and again with its cliffhanger ending.