The Giver - Book Review

Memories vary between happy ones and painful ones and what might be a devastating memory to one person, might not be to another. Through experience and memory everyone learns and receives different qualities that make them who they are. Lois Lowry creates a pure community full of comfort, security and no doubts in her novel “The Giver”, “the life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past” (pg 207). In exchange for these qualities memories, freedom and choices, individual traits and colour are abandoned. Despite the firm rules set for the whole community, citizens have to accept and follow them because they don’t have feelings or memories. Different from everyone else, Jonas and The Giver are able to recall memories, see colour, have the capacity to see and hear beyond and have empathy. Asher, Jonas’s best friend, doesn’t have memories and is as happy as usual. Rosemary, who is selected to be a Receiver, gives up and decides she wants to be released. However, Jonas and The Giver on the other hand are wise and knowledgeable and do what they can to alter the rules of the community.

In this novel, it can be seen that the attitude of Asher, Lily and the rest of the community have on release, taking pills, having fabricated birthdays and so on are the same; they think that it is right. When Asher plays a game of war with his friends, Jonas observes and realises “he (has) never recognised it before as a game of war” (pg 169) and he is reminded of the memory he has with the boy lying there, dying, on a field begging for water. Shortly, he tells them to stop playing the game as it is a “cruel game” (pg 171), which makes Asher annoyed at Jonas because he “ruined it” (pg 170) and likewise, Fiona is equally confused. “But he knew that they could not understand why, without the memories. He felt such love for Asher and Fiona. But they could not feel it back, without the memories” (pg 171) This quote illustrates the importance of having memories and that memories can bring empathy and that though Jonas wishes to return to his blank self, he knows that he never can, even if he misses it. This is also expressed when Jonas asks his parents if they love him and they said that ‘love’ “is a very generalised word, so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete” (pg 162). Lois Lowry also accentuates that people in the community turn a blind eye and never question as to why they Release babies who are different or why they Release people who are no longer useful or productive, like the Old. They become used to it, killing becomes a normal routine and this horrible and terrifying action does no damage emotionally to anyone. Even so, Jonas’s father senselessly kills babies however, nothing can really stop this because “it’s what he was told to do, and he knows nothing else” (pg 192). For these reasons, in a world with such demanding regulation