The Giver

The Receiver's house is unlike all of the others in The Giver. (Jonas actually becomes referred to as The Receiver, while the older man tells Jonas to address him as The Giver.) It is the only...

In chapter one of The Giver, Jonas is feeling anxious. At first he thinks he is frightened, but realizes it is apprehension he is feeling. The Ceremony of Twelve is coming up, and this is a big...

The Ceremony for the Ones is the occasion when a newchild is given a name and handed over to its parents. It is the first of all the Ceremonies and happens every December when each newchild born in...

In Lowry's utopian society, family units are decided by the Committee of Elders, who examine and consider what adults should be matched together after each adult applies to receive a spouse. The...

Jonas's first lie comes in Chapter 16 when he asks his parents if they love him. This simple question earns him a gentle rebuke from his parents. There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then...

It is interesting how the educational system and culture are set up in Lois Lowry's The Giver. First of all, only 50 children are allowed to enter the community when they are born, and even then...

The elders of Jonas's community act like a city council or governing body. They enforce the rules, determine job assignments, organize family units, host celebrations, declare holidays, and...

In chapter 12, we first know that the Giver agrees with Jonas in disliking sameness when the Giver simply responds "it is" after Jonas expresses his appreciation of the beauty of the color red. In...

In chapter 3, Jonas's family meets Gabriel for the first time, and Lily comments that she hopes to be assigned as a Birthmother when she grows up. Lily's mother instantly chastises her daughter for...

Assignments are "secret selections" made by the Committee of Elders in order to determine what individuals will do in their lives. In order to make their selections, the Elders first carefully...

Intelligence: Jonas demonstrates intelligence when he is able to distinguish between his own reality and the reality of his family. He makes the distinction between his mother's "feelings" of...

One important flashback that Jonas has in The Giver occurs in Chapter 3, when he remembers the time that he took an apple home from the recreation area. Jonas recalls that there was a humiliating...

We learn about the duties of Birthmothers in chapter five, when Lily expresses the wish to become one. Her mother is quite upset by her declaration and responds tersely, telling her that she should...

In The Giver, Jonas experiences war in Chapter 15. That entire chapter is devoted to an episode in which Jonas is given the memory of a war. The narrator does not tell us what war it is that...

In chapter 13, the Giver explains to Jonas what happened to the memories and the community when the previous Receiver failed. The Giver tells Jonas that there was chaos throughout the community,...

Jonas is more fully human in the traditional sense of the word than the other residents of his community, with the exception of the Giver, of course. In a sense, Jonas is an anachronism in his...

There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book that you're looking at so the rules will be listed by...

The answer to this question can be found near the beginning of chapter one. After dinner, Jonas and his family begin the nightly ritual of telling each other the feelings that were felt over the...

The only books most members of the community have are rule books or instruction books. Jonas has schoolbooks and every dwelling has rule books. However, no one has access to regular books except...

The unidentified aircraft that flew over the community was a jet plane. One day a “needle-nosed single-pilot jet” flies over the community. This causes fear in Jonas and everyone else, because...

Jonas and the Giver agree that the community needs to have all the memories of happiness, sadness, joy, and pain that had previously been held by the Giver and Jonas. The way to make this happen...

In the community, the most-valued thing is "sameness". Thus, everyone strives to be the same - to not stick out. In the process of working toward "sameness", the elders at some point or another...

At the end of chapter 10, the Giver tries using a simile to explain his experience of memories. He stops when he realizes that many of the terms have no meaning to Jonas whatsoever; because of the...

In Jonas's structured community, which is founded on the concepts of Sameness, the Committee of Elders is responsible for assembling complete family units and picking each citizen's spouse. The...

Pros: The citizens in Jonas's community will finally have the opportunity to make independent decisions and control their own lives. The citizens will also get to experience life as originally...

(eNotes educators may only answer one question per response. If you need more help, submit other questions separately.) The community in which Jonas and his parents live places a very high...

The purpose of dream-telling is to determine any emotions a person might be feeling that the person does not realize and get rid of them. Jonas’s community has two rituals related to feelings....

Gabriel is a small, fretful newborn that Jonas's father takes home with him, hoping that their home will allow the infant an opportunity to sleep and grow. However, Gabe has not gained additional...

The Giver is a young adult novel about a community in which everyone has a specific job that they are chosen for. There is no color or climate in the community, and no one has any memories. The...

The rule about the number of children allowed in each family unit is very clear. Each unit may have only two children, one male and one female (Chapter 1). When the parents in a family unit feel...

Elsewhere is an ambiguous term used to keep citizens in the dark about what happens when someone is "released" from the community. Both Elsewhere and "release" are coverup words. They cover up the...

More than anything else, this is a practical arrangement. On the one hand, the community can't completely banish memories of the past, no matter how hard it tries. On the other hand, if such...

The Ceremony of Loss is mentioned in chapter 6 during the first Ceremony, called The Ceremony for the Ones. This Ceremony also includes the naming Ceremony in which newchildren born in the previous...

When their kids are grown, parents go to live with the Childless Adults, and have little contact with their children after that. In The Giver, families are carefully planned. Parents are matched...

Twins are not acceptable in the community because having identical people would be confusing. In The Giver, when identical twins are born, they are weighed and the smaller one is released. Release...

Euphemism is the use of a polite, indirect expression which replaces words and/or phrases that are considered harsh, impolite, or which suggest something unpleasant. For example, "kick the bucket"...

As was mentioned in the previous post, Jonas explains his odd dream to his parents in Chapter 5. Jonas tells his parents that in his dream, he was in the bathing room at the House of the Old with...

Jonas learns more about his father's job as a Nurturer in chapter 2. Father shares with Jonas that the year their family received Lily, he could have found out her name before the Naming Ceremony...

The ending of Lois Lowry's The Giver, is notoriously ambiguous. Many questions remain unanswered and the reader has the opportunity to examine the possibilities of what they think happens after...

Jonas is different from the rest of his community because he has light eyes and the Capacity to See Beyond. In Jonas’s community, most people do not question the way things are. Things just are as...

Most people in Jonas' society have dark eyes. There are only a few exceptions to this. Jonas, Gabe, a female Six (Katherine), Rosemary, and the Giver all have pale eyes. To Jonas, pale eyes aren't...

In Chapter 18, the Giver explains to Jonas what happened to the previous Receiver of Memory. The Giver begins by telling Jonas that the previous Receiver of Memory was named Rosemary and mentions...

Jonas reacts badly to the game that Asher and his other friends are playing. He stands in the center of the field in which they are playing, struggling to not cry, and then he asks Asher to stop...

In chapter 1 of Lois Lowry's The Giver, Jonas and his family are sharing their feelings for the evening. Father, who is a Nurturer and works with the newborn children, says that he will soon ask...

The citizens celebrate the releasing of the elderly at the House of the Old in Jonas's community. In chapter 4, Jonas visits the House of the Old, where Fiona and Asher are completing their...

Jonas shows courage many times throughout the book, but in Chapter 21 he flees with Gabriel. Jonas is brave. He demonstrates that consistently. When the Chief Elder is listing traits that Jonas...

After Jonas receives the rules for his Assignment as the community's next Receiver of Memory, he reads that he will experience physical pain. When Jonas asks the Giver why they are the only two...

I believe that Jonas escapes for two reasons, and it is up to individual readers to decide if one of those reasons is a larger driving force than the other, or if both reasons are equally weighted...

Jonas’s family life is going to be different from your family life because his father and mother are appointed by a committee, as is his sister, and none of them are biologically related. Although...

Jonas and The Giver plan for him to escape during the next Ceremony of Twelve. When Jonas sees his father kill a newborn baby, he no longer desires to go back home. He realizes that his community...