The Giver: Lois Lowry’s Perfect World and the Boy Who Remembers
Imagine a world without change, where something as obvious as colour does not exist. Natural disasters, war, fear and pain are absent; everything is under control. Lois Lowry’s The Giver, first published in 1993 and winner of the Newbery Medal, begins in that apparent utopia and slowly shows the price of so much comfort.
Author: Lois Lowry
Title: The Giver (1993)
Format: Kindle eBook, available on Amazon.es (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
Scope: First book of the Giver Quartet, followed by Gathering Blue, Messenger and Son
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/B00ALKO9WE (ASIN B00ALKO9WE)
A Community Without Surprises
Births, jobs, education, the number of houses: everything is precisely laid down and regulated by a few simple rules. Each family unit lives exactly as prescribed, and equality is one of the society’s most prized values. Nobody wants for anything, because everything is provided.
What looks like a utopia becomes a disturbing world for Jonas. It all starts on the day of the Ceremony, when he turns twelve and, like everyone his age, is assigned his future role. But his case is different. Once his training with the Giver begins, there is no way back: Jonas will discover the truth.
The Weight of Memory
Jonas is chosen to receive and keep the memories of the past, the colours, the pain and the joy that the rest of the community has given up. It is a very heavy burden, but an indispensable task, and it forces him to see his world with new eyes. Lowry tells the story plainly, which makes each discovery land harder.
Jonas and the Ceremony of Twelve
The story follows Jonas, who at the Ceremony of Twelve is not given an ordinary job like his friends but selected as the next Receiver of Memory. His training with the old man known as the Giver means receiving, one by one, the memories the community has erased: snow, sunshine, colour, but also war, hunger and pain. With them comes the ability to see what "release" really means, and the realisation that a baby his family has been caring for, Gabriel, is in danger.
Lowry’s Place in Children’s Literature
Lois Lowry won the Newbery Medal twice, first for Number the Stars and then for The Giver. The book has been taught in schools for decades and has also been among the titles most often challenged in American libraries, largely because it trusts young readers with hard subjects. Its open ending puzzled many readers; Lowry returned to Jonas’s world in Gathering Blue, Messenger and finally Son (2012), which answers the questions the first book left hanging. A film version with Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep followed in 2014.
For Readers Of
Anyone who enjoyed The Hunger Games or Divergent will find here one of the quieter books that paved the way for them, shorter and more thoughtful. Adults who missed it at school can read it in an evening.
A Small Book That Lasts
What stays with readers is not the dystopian machinery but small moments: Jonas seeing the colour red for the first time, or sharing a memory of a family Christmas. Lowry shows that feeling pain is the price of feeling joy.
Why Read It Now
The Giver captivates the reader from the first page and forces you to think. It is a book that moves you and, at the same time, leaves you a little uneasy. Often described as one of the books that shaped the modern young-adult dystopia, it was adapted for the cinema in 2014 with Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep. Read it before the many novels that followed it; it still asks the sharpest question of them all: what is a painless life worth if you cannot choose?
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