The Giver

The Giver

How would you like to live in a world with no feeling or freedom? No choice, no color, no intelligence of what's happening around you? This is what Jonas' life is like from The Giver, by Lois Lowry. In Jonas' community, it is all sameness. No one loves anyone, or had real thoughts. Everyone is basically brainwashed, and the people don't even realize it. The people are all protected from a real life because of the Receiver of Memory, the one who feels the world's pain, sadness, happiness, and love on his shoulders. It's up to Jonas, the new Receiver of Memory to show the world what they are missing out on, to right the wrongs of their systems.

At the beginning, Jonas's life is all sameness. Nothing is new, nothing is ever different. Everything is black and white in his world, literally. Then one day at his learning center during recreation time, he and his best friend Asher are playing catch with an apple. Right when Jonas was about to catch the apple, it changed. It turned color, but Jonas didn't realize that at the time because he didn't know what color was. That was the first big event in Jonas's life.

A little while after that experience with the apple, Jonas has his Ceremony of Twelve coming up. Everyone in the community goes. All the ones, twos, threes, and so on get honored up to age twelve, which is the biggest age to turn. At the Ceremony of Twelve, all the elevens get their assignment. When his name is called, he is shocked by his assignment. Receiver of Memory, the greatest and most honorable assignment you can get. This is the second biggest event in Jonas' life.

Fast forward about a year. Jonas has been meeting with the Giver, the old Receiver everyday. Jonas has learned and felt things he never knew about. He learned what it felt like to be starving, to be dying, to be hurting, to be mourning, to be singled out