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Gathering Blue
Matt lives in an area known as the Fen, which is a lower-class area equivalent to a slum in our culture. Kira lives in the village, and those who live in the Fen are closely associated with village...
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Gathering Blue
In chapter 2, Kira returns to the village after attending her mother's dead body in the Field of Leaving, only to find that the women of the village intend to kill her so that they can have the...
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Gathering Blue
The answer to your question lies in Chapter 18. There, we discover that Jo wants to write a new song for Kira. In the story, Jo has been assigned to prepare for her eventual role of Singer. She is...
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Gathering Blue
To picture the setting in Gathering Blue, one might imagine a melding of twentieth-century American suburbia with seventeenth-century Native American wattle-and-daub construction (see link). Since...
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Gathering Blue
Gathering Blue depicts a post-apocalyptic society. The exact form the apocalypse took remains cryptic in the novel, but as the story begins, the "civilization of the ancestors" had ended long ago....
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Gathering Blue
The society in Gathering Blue is led by an oligarchy, a Council of Guardians who enforce the laws and resolve disputes. While the guardians and their functions are rather mysterious to Kira, she...
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Gathering Blue
Kira's society places a very low value on human life, especially the lives of babies and children. Kira's society values those who "contribute" to the physical needs of themselves and the...
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Gathering Blue
There are many characteristics of the society in Gathering Blue that make it dystopian, and perhaps one that breaks the rules for a typical dystopia. A dystopian society is usually understood as a...
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Gathering Blue
Perhaps the best insight into how Kira's community values human life is provided by Kira's trial. Vandara, Kira's accuser, brings a case against Kira that relies on the accepted standards of the...
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Gathering Blue
Gathering Blue takes place in a post-apocalyptic society that has been rebuilt without technology. Because most citizens of the society are illiterate, the community preserves its history orally...
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Gathering Blue
In the introduction to Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue audio book and in an interview with Scholastic (see below), the author hints at why she wrote the book. When she wrote The Giver, the companion...
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Gathering Blue
Each reader will respond differently to Gathering Blue, but many will find a number of satisfying elements in the novel and possibly a few elements that are less satisfying. One strength of the...
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Gathering Blue
In Gathering Blue, many effects that at first seem to have one cause end up having a completely different cause. For example, the novel opens with Kira's mother's death after a "brief and...
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Gathering Blue
An internal conflict is a struggle that takes place within a character's mind, while an external conflict is a struggle that takes place between the character and another character, the society,...
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Gathering Blue
When Kira returns to the village from the Field of Leaving after her mother has died, she sees Matt, a boy of about eight or nine years old, who has always been friendly toward her. She knows she...
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Gathering Blue
Thomas is a teen-aged boy who functions as the special woodcarver for Kira's community. Even before Kira comes to live at the Council Edifice, she knows about him. He is called Thomas the Carver,...
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Gathering Blue
Thomas the Carver lives in the Council Edifice with Kira. Like Kira, he was orphaned and taken in by the Council of Guardians because of his artistic abilities. Thomas can be described as friendly,...
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Gathering Blue
Kira, knowing her mother's cott might be burned while she was at the Field of Leaving, had managed to stash away some personal possessions in the clearing so they wouldn't be destroyed. Matt, Kira...
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Gathering Blue
In Kira's society, women are second-class citizens, and they live very separate lives from the men for the most part. Women seem to be primarily in charge of child-rearing, gardening, tending...
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Gathering Blue
When Kira returns from attending her mother's corpse on the Field of Leaving, she intends to rebuild her burned cott. The women of the village, led by Vandara, want to use that land to build a pen...
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Gathering Blue
Lois Lowry, the author of Gathering Blue, chose an artist to be the main character because she wanted a character who was uniquely capable of influencing her society, even as a young person. The...
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Gathering Blue
The short answer to your question is yes, Kira's society does relate to the United States. But to be more specific, Kira's society relates only in parts. The society is not a mirror image of...
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Gathering Blue
Ten key events in Gathering Blue are: 1. Kira's mother's spirit drifts away. As the story opens, Kira's mother has been dead for four days, but the drifting away of her spirit means Kira can return...
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Gathering Blue
Authors use dystopian fiction to look at current society with a critical eye. In Gathering Blue, Kira's society reflects the possible outcome of human culture if some aspects of modern culture...
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Gathering Blue
In Lois Lowry's book Gathering Blue, the fact that Matt does not know what "gift" means is significant is because it demonstrate Matt's background and upbringing (or, rather, the lack of it.) By...
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Gathering Blue
Lowry creates an interesting dialect for Matt. The people of the village, including Vandara and Kira, speak with typical grammar, although they use words unique to their society, such as cott and...
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Gathering Blue
Although Matt is only eight or nine years old, and although he displays a lack of manners consistent with his upbringing in the Fen, he declines to enter Kira's room with her when Jamison ushers...
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Gathering Blue
The Ruin Song chronicles the history of people and life on earth from the beginning to the present. Because most people in Kira's society are illiterate, the Ruin Song is the way the culture...
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Gathering Blue
Matt matures and grows more courageous over the course of Gathering Blue. In chapter 1, Matt meets Kira coming back to the village from the Field of Leaving. She hopes he will help her rebuild her...
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Gathering Blue
Gathering Blue contains three kinds of irony: verbal, dramatic, and situational. Verbal irony occurs when words mean the opposite of what their literal meaning suggests. Dramatic irony is when...
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Gathering Blue
When Kira is in the field to deal with the death of her mother, Kira's cott burns down. Matt, a young boy from town, is able to save a few items from the fire. It is not clear who set the fire in...
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Gathering Blue
Matt, the young boy from the Fen who befriends Kira, is thoughtful, alert, and strong-willed. He shows his thoughtfulness throughout the book. Near the beginning of the story, Kira learns that Matt...
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Gathering Blue
At the beginning of the story, Kira is unsure of herself and is focused on day-to-day survival. She also thinks a lot about the past, especially her recently-deceased mother and her father who she...
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Gathering Blue
At the end of Gathering Blue, Kira is about to journey with her father to a different town called The Village of Healing. It would mean that Kira would have to leave everyone and everything behind,...
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Gathering Blue
The answer is both yes and no. Gathering Blue is set in a village that is very dissimilar to the community which Jonas leaves at the end of The Giver. Kira, the main character in Gathering Blue,...
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Gathering Blue
In Gathering Blue both the robe and the Song are methods by which the Council keeps control of society. Gathering Blue is a "companion" book of The Giver; both are set in the future after an...
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Gathering Blue
Lowry describes five significant objects in Gathering Blue. These objects are described in detail and/or are referenced multiple times. Each of them has a symbolic meaning as well as being...
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Gathering Blue
Both Thomas and Kira are artists. Thomas has the ability to carve intricate designs in wood, and Kira can embroider scenes in beautiful colors with thread. Kira discovers that their journeys as...
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Gathering Blue
Kira first meets Jamison while she is on trial for her life. She must decide whether to defend herself or allow an appointed defender to manage her case. She doubts whether someone who doesn't know...
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Gathering Blue
Women in Gathering Blue are not allowed to go on the hunt. When Kira looks out of Thomas's window and sees the men preparing for the hunt, she notices that Matt is among them. She persuades Thomas...
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Gathering Blue
Kira begins to worry about Matt when she hasn't seen him for two days. She persuades Thomas to go with her to the Fen to try to find out whether he is ill or why he hasn't been to see them. They...
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Gathering Blue
There are three powerful symbols of expectation in Gathering Blue. Kira and Thomas, the artists, each have a job that entails recording the future. Kira, the Threader of the Singer's robe, will...
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Gathering Blue
In chapter 8, Kira, accompanied by Matt, goes to the forest to Annabella's cott to learn about dyeing. Matt runs ahead, then comes back and reports to Kira, "There's the crone outside in the...
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Gathering Blue
One of the most glaringly unfair rules of Kira's village is that only boys and men are allowed to learn to read and write. No explanation is given for such an arbitrary and sexist practice. Another...
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Gathering Blue
I'm not sure whether you mean "expectations" or "exceptions" in this question, but I think the answer is the same. During Kira's trial, Vandara accuses her and invokes the rules of the society to...
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Gathering Blue
Thomas was special because he was an artist. When he was still a very young boy, the guardians noticed his ability to carve wood. They apparently wanted to groom him as the official carver who...
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Gathering Blue
In Kira's society, children, or tykes as they are called, are considered valuable because they can become workers for the family unit. However, any child who represents a drain on the family...
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Gathering Blue
The Council Edifice is the only building in Kira's village that remains from before the Ruin, a time in the distant past during which destroyed the civilization of their ancestors. The building is...
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Gathering Blue
Kira is a lot of things. Physically she is crippled and could have been killed because of it given that her society doesn't tolerate such things. It's possible her internal character traits arose...
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Gathering Blue
I think Kira changes so much throughout the novel because of two reasons. First, she has to change and adapt in order to survive. The culture that Kira lives in does not take kindly to people...
