The Giver – Lois Lowry

The Giver is an amazing and spontaneous book that is written from the point of view of a 12 year old boy named Jonas living in a society that has managed to eliminate all war, pain and fear. Mostly everyone looks and acts the same. There is absolutely no choice in the community.

At age 12 every member of the community is assigned a job based on their qualities and likes. When citizens get to a certain age and maturity level they can apply for a compatible spouse, each couple can only have two children, one female and one male. The children are born from a birthmother who actually never gets to see their baby. Released means death, but its never fully described this way, people in the community think that release means being sent to Elsewhere, an unknown land that exists beyond the boundaries of the Communities. Being released doesn’t always means a good thing; citizens who break rules or fail to adapt properly to the society rules are also released but not sent to Elsewhere and this is actually looked as something “unappropriated” on the community.

Jonas is assigned to be the receiver because he can actually look beyond and no one the community besides him and The Giver can actually do this. Seeing beyond means looking at colours, listening to music etc. Jonas starts receiving knowledge and wisdom with the memories as well as pain that’s something no one in the community has ever acknowledged. The Giver transmits memories to Jonas about past events like war, Christmas and more, the reason Jonas should have this memories is for him to have wisdom to help the community in cases of danger. The people don’t have a choice to avoid problems; its what the elders decided and it has been like that for years. The Community had achieved at such a great price, a community without war or pain. But also a community without colour or art and most importantly books.

Jonas & The Giver come to the realization that there’s is more to life than the community itself so they make a plan for Jonas to escape and find what more there is to the world than just this community. This novel is very well written the way the details are explained in the novel is very complete. The reason I rated this novel so high was because of how eye opening it actually is. It is its fairness that makes the novel so riveting and thought provoking, and so perfect for triggering discussions. This is a not a book that’s recommended for everyone: I would recommend the book for older children aged 13 or older. It has some strong parts, for example releasing babies which is later on learned that its actually injecting a baby to death. There are also plenty of sexual references but again this is why I recommend this book for older children. This book reminds us not to take for granted the amazing gift God gave us – the freedom of choice. Highly recommended.