#3 - Summary
Hey!
This is a brief summary of The Giver. If you haven't read the book yet, this will help you understand my future posts on my thoughts and feelings about the book. Actually, you should just read it!
Anyway...
The Giver is written from Jonas' point of view. Jonas is an eleven-year-old boy living in a futuristic society that has eliminated all pain, fear, war, and hatred.
There is no prejudice, since everyone looks and acts basically the same. This society has also eliminated choice: at age twelve every member of the community is assigned a job based on his or her abilities and interests.
In the community, release is death. Citizens who break rules or fail to adapt properly to the society’s codes of behavior are also released, though in their cases it is an occasion of great shame.
Jonas lives with his father, his mother and his seven-year-old sister Lily. At the beginning of the novel, he is apprehensive about the upcoming Ceremony of Twelve, when he will be given his official Assignment as a new adult member of the community. He does not have a distinct career preference, although he enjoys volunteering at a variety of different jobs.
Though he is a well-behaved citizen and a good student, Jonas is different. He has pale eyes, while most people in his community have dark eyes, and he has unusual powers of perception. Sometimes objects “change” when he looks at them. He does not know it yet, but he alone in his community can perceive flashes of color; for everyone else, the world is devoid of colour.
At the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas is given the highly honored Assignment of Receiver of Memory. The Receiver is the sole keeper of the community’s collective memory. When the community went over to Sameness, its was painless, warless, and mostly emotionless, it abandoned all memories of pain, war, and emotion. However, the memories cannot disappear completely. Someone must keep them so that the community can avoid making the mistakes of the past, even though no one but the Receiver can bear the pain. Jonas receives the memories of the past from the current Receiver, a wise old man who tells Jonas to call him the Giver.
The Giver transmits memories by placing his hands on Jonas’s bare back. As Jonas receives memories from the Giver, he realizes how dull and empty life in his community really is. The memories make Jonas’s life richer and more meaningful, and he wishes that he could give that richness and meaning to the people he loves. But in exchange for their peaceful existence, the people of Jonas’s community have lost the capacity to love him back or to feel deep passion about anything. Since they have never experienced real suffering, they also cannot appreciate the real joy of life, and the life of individual people seems less precious to them. In addition, no one in Jonas’s community has ever made a choice of his or her own. Jonas grows more and more frustrated with the members of his community, and the Giver, who has felt the same way for many years, encourages him. The two grow very close, like a grandfather and a grandchild might have in the days before Sameness.
Meanwhile, Jonas is helping his family take care of a problem newchild, Gabriel, who has trouble sleeping through the night at the Nurturing Center. Jonas helps the child to sleep by transmitting soothing memories to him every night, and he begins to develop a relationship with Gabriel that mirrors the family relationships he has experienced through the memories. When Gabriel is in danger of being released, the Giver reveals to Jonas that release is the same as death. Jonas’s rage and horror at this revelation inspire the Giver to help Jonas devise a plan to change things in the community forever.
The Giver and Jonas plan for Jonas to escape the community and to actually enter Elsewhere. Once he has done that, his larger supply of memories will disperse, and the Giver will help the community to come to terms with the new feelings and thoughts, changing the society forever.
Hope you get a better idea about what The Giver is about!
Love,
Claris
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