Jonas, the main character in the Giver, lives in a futuristic world that is “perfect.”  But as the book continues Lois Lowry portrays that this world really isn’t perfect, and it seems to be missing something.  What Jonas’s world is missing is memory, choice, and freedom.  The main point of this book is that memory is important and essential for freedom and emotions.  It carries all the value of life.  I found somewhere online that Lois Lowry was inspired to write the Giver after meeting her father who was losing his long term memory. The community, as I like to think of it as a town, has strict rules that all must follow.  There are ageing ceremonies from age 1-12 and after 12 they are known as adults.  Every year the community gathers and celebrates the child becoming older etc. Specially though, at age 12 the children are assigned a role (job) in the community by the elders (the leaders of the community) that they are to do to help the community.  They don’t even pick what they get to do for the rest of there lives.  Jonas, as he turns 12 gets assigned a special role.  He is to become a receiver, the most important job of the community.  The Giver, was the old receiver, and he holds all the memories of the world.  Jonas is to receive the memories from the Giver. 

Love, friendship, fun, color, and music, all these things, the people of this time do not have.  The people of their current world do not have these because they sacrificed all their memories to eradicate and ban pain.  What the elders didn’t realize was that memory holds things of greater importance than pain.  Now that they don’t have access to all the memories of the world except for the Giver, they don’t value their lives because they have never felt pain or really have known what it is.  Thus, they can so easily, without really caring “release” (kill) anyone who is not “perfect” or doesn’t follow the rules.  They live very monotonous lives of hardly any value.

Jonas experiences lots of things in his training to become the next receiver.  He also gets warnings that the training will be difficult and it will hurt him.  Jonas doesn’t only receive the memories of happiness, color, love, etc., he has to receive, death, starvation, and war. Jonas can understand why these things were banned but he starts to think if it was worth all the other emotions.  He starts to realize that his world and community run by rules is not perfect and he asks the Giver why we can’t have these things back. The following passage proves the loss of love in the world.

           “Do you love me?” There was an awkward silence for a moment.  Then father gave a little chuckle. 

“Jonas.  You of all people.  Precision of language, please!”

“What do you mean?” Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.

          “Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it’s become obsolete,” his mother explained carefully. Jonas, is amazed at his parents response of love being meaningless and as the Giver once said, the world Jonas is living in, is not complete.  IT’S MESSED UP.

 As I said the community is run by rules that all must follow.  Break a rule three times and you are released, (KILLED).  After watching his own father “release” a young baby because supposedly that baby was not perfect Jonas gets really angry and complains to the Giver.   This is what he says… “I will take care of that sir. I will take care of that sir,” Jonas mimicked in a cruel, sarcastic voice.  “I will do whatever you like sir.  I will kill people sir. Old people? Small newborn people? I’d be happy to kill them, sir. Thank you for your instructions, sir.”  This quote really proves Jonas’s anger at the communities low value for life.  He and the Giver make a plot. Jonas is to escape the community to a land of unknown.  He hears his father talking of release of another newborn child that Jonas’s family was taking care of.  They were going to release it because it couldn’t sleep well.  Jonas can’t stand another death and so he takes the child with him and leaves. 

The Giver, by Lois Lowry makes us realize that memories ARE essential to the meaning of life and without them, we wouldn’t understand life and it’s value.  I LOVED the Giver. It was a decently quick read, but powerful.  I enjoyed it and recommend it to anybody.  I plan to continue the series.

THE END