The Giver depicts a society of sameness where everything is perfectly normal every day. Everybody is polite. Every family has a mother and a father. There is no hate or war. From outward appearance, it is the perfect community, but further into the novel it becomes apparent what the community is missing: love, color, and diversity.
We feel the impact even more of what is missing as we experience Jonas’ first memories of snow, sun, and sailing—all seen with his newly-acquired colors. Readers identify with Jonas’ realization of the community’s deficiencies and Jonas’ growing desires for change.
Readers journey through the pain and joy of the memories and weigh the benefits and limitations of Sameness, understanding Jonas’ need to reach Elsewhere because of his growing isolation from the community due to his sudden wisdom.
Jonas, The New Receiver: The Chosen One
Jonas is set apart from his dystopian community when he is chosen to be the next receiver, the one who holds the memories of the past, the one who is entrusted the wisdom for the community’s dilemmas, the one who has the ability to see beyond.
Jonas is the one destined to be lonely and to understand what his life is lacking. Because of his unique position to understand and develop values about life, Jonas is able to fight against the community’s loss of sight and choice.
Lowry's Message to a Modern World Heading Toward Apathy and Control
The Giver demonstrate the dangers of control and apathy in our modern world. Lowry’s message is delivered through Jonas who encourages young adult readers to discover their values and develop the courage necessary to defend their freedom.
Some adults worry that this message will send the wrong idea to teenagers who are already known for rebelling, but Anderson and Lowry demonstrate the faith they have in modern youth to challenge society’s norms.
As Lowry said in an interview, “[W]e can’t live in a walled world, in an ‘only us, only now’ world, where we are all the same and feel safe. We would have to sacrifice too much. The richness of color would disappear. Feelings for other humans would no longer be necessary. Choice would be obsolete." It is better to challenge society than become comfortably apathetic and allow ourselves to lose all freedoms.
A Fictional World to Represent a Possible Future
Lowry uses the giver to relay her message to readers, Jonas to represent modern teenagers’ ability to resist control and Sameness, and the community to represent our world's danger and possible future with continued restriction, conformity, and apathy.
One of Lowry’s strongest messages is spoken about the dystopian community to Jonas through the giver after Jonas discovers his father has been killing newborns (previously understood as “release to Elsewhere”) that don’t fulfill the community’s requirements. “…They can’t help it. They know nothing” (153). Through these simple words, Lowry warns readers of the future that apathetic behavior could result in.
Hope Found In The Giver
However depressing the thought of a weatherless, emotionless, colorless world might be, Lowry encourages young adults that hope always remains, even in the most impossible situations when Jonas saves newchild Gabriel from release in pursuit of Elsewhere.
Whether readers interpret the ambiguous ending of The Giver as Jonas and Gabriel reaching Elsewhere, returning to their own community that has adapted into a more welcoming one, reaching heaven, or experiencing nothing but hallucinations leading into death, the ending is a hopeful one because even if death is the result, Jonas saved himself and Gabriel from Sameness, experiencing beauty along the way to a true Release, possibly much more.
How The Giver Influences Young Adults
How realistic is it for young adults to follow Lowry’s lead? Her novel has been criticized for the encouragement of rebellion against authority.
If a person rebelled against our modern world in an effort to better it, people might label that person as insane, but in The Giver, Jonas has a unique circumstance that allow him to find his own understanding of truth and values and compare it to his surroundings: Jonas was chosen to receive the memories and truths about his community whereas everybody around him (except for the giver) was blind to the knowledge.
Today’s young adults might not feel chosen as Jonas, but we do not live a dystopia—yet. Children and young adults still have the freedom and opportunities to understand themselves and how their views correlate with their society through art, religion, and common human experience.
Books like The Giver challenge young adults to follow Jonas' lead to challenge the norms of society instead of follow blindly. Dystopian novels like The Giver are vital to a society slipping toward sameness and apathy.
The Giver by Lois Lowry, published in 1993 by Dell Laurel-Leaf--Random House, ISBN: 0-440-23768-8
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