The Giver

The speakers provide an enforcement role in the community and the people automatically obey them. In the community, everyone’s every move is watched all of the time. Community rules are reinforced...

Each age group is given a different developmental gift, including a bicycle at age 9 and a job at age 12. In the tightly controlled community of The Giver, Sameness is a priority. All children are...

There are a few factors which lead to Jonas feeling alone or separated after the Ceremony of Twelve, during which he learns that he is to be the next Receiver. First, he is given his assignment in...

The Committee of Elders has the enormous responsibility of making virtually every significant decision in the community; it issues laws to ensure the citizens' safety and comfort. The Committee of...

At first, Jonas is startled when the Giver shares the distant memory of snow. But after the experience of sledding, Jonas becomes excited, and he delights in the sensation of frigid air, going...

Jonas gives an old woman named Larissa a bath. Every eight to eleven year old is required to complete volunteer hours in the community. It is how the community elders determine where the...

Jonas’s father wants to bring the newchild home for extra nurturing. Jonas’s father is a Nurturer, and his job is to take care of infants. In Jonas’s community, infants are known as newchildren...

In the world in which Jonas lives, everything is the same for everyone, from the clothing they wear to the weather the experience. Thanks to the carefully controlled climate, Jonas knows nothing...

Unlike in our world, children in the community do not get to choose their own jobs. The assignments are selected for them by a committee. Everyone has a job in the community, as with our world....

The Elders choose a spouse for you in order to ensure perfect family units. In Jonas’s community, people do not create their own families. A family unit in Jonas’s community is not the same as a...

The Receiver of Memory is in training to eventually become the highest leader in the community. The position is so respected that when the Elders cannot arrive at a decision, they leave the...

The Receiver of Memory is a position of honor because it is well-respected, but the position has very little power because all the Receiver can do is make recommendations to the Elders. Honor means...

In The Giver, when Jonas throws the apple to Asher, Jonas notices something strange about the apple. He asks Asher if he has also noticed something change about the apple, but Asher is oblivious....

When the last Receiver of Memories failed, the memories that she already possessed were released and lost. "It was chaos," the Giver comments. "They really suffered for a while. Finally it...

Euphemisms for conformity and tragic situations such as death and mental handicaps, etc. abound in The Giver as well as in modern society. "Political correctness" and "Conventional Wisdom" (both...

In chapter 9, Jonas reads the rules of his assignment and is unnerved by the rule that prohibits him from taking any medication for pain that is related to his training. Jonas has never before...

At first, Jonas sees the logic in sameness. It is even a source of concern for him, at times, that he is one of the few people in the community with light eyes instead of dark ones. He sees that...

Since "release" is the term that the community uses for lethal injection, we know that the people who are released die. What happens to their physical bodies after death is not discussed in the...

Jonas recalls feeling frightened when a jet plane accidentally flew over the community and all the citizens are instructed to remain indoors for an extended period of time before being told that...

Jonas leaves his community when he finds out that Gabriel is going to be released. When Jonas finds out what release really means, he is shocked. He has no idea, like everyone else in his...

When Jonas is selected to be The Receiver, the Chief Elder explains why he is assigned such an important role in the community. She says that Jonas has all of the requirements needed to be The...

Some of the rules that are discussed in these chapters include: Females under age nine are to keep their hair ribbons neatly tied at all times. Objects are not to be removed from the recreation...

If Jonas were to continue in the community living among the others, I do think it would be difficult for Jonas to have a spouse. Through The Giver, Jonas has learned to feel love. This is not...

There are many things that remain unknown at the conclusion of "The Giver." The reader never knows for sure whether Jonas and Gabe make it to another community, find the outside world, or if they...

The Giver is a story about a society in which everything appears wonderful, good, and peaceful. There is no pain, suffering, hatred, bigotry, etc. It sounds great, and much of that is due to the...

Jonas is unable to transmit the memory to Lily. Jonas’s rules tell him that he cannot discuss his training with anyone, and that of course means that he should not be transmitting memories either....

Jonas helps Gabriel to sleep soundly by giving him memories, which means that Gabe is also a potential receiver. Eventually this causes Jonas to have to flee with Gabe when the baby is...

Jonas was out at night, stole food, and stole his father’s bike. Jonas has broken three rules when he escapes with Gabriel. In Jonas’s community, when a person breaks three rules, he is released....

Jonas learns about the concept of love during a particular training session with the Giver. As the community's Receiver of Memory, Jonas has the unique opportunity to experience memories of the...

First things first, we need to establish what the Receiver of Memory is. In a nutshell, the Receiver is the only person who’s mind stores the collective memories of the community. In this world,...

The Giver has some pretty broad themes, but the events within the story can help you build those up into a great, specific thesis statement with well-formed points of evidence backing it up. Let's...

There are many good thesis possibilities for The Giver. The book has so much to teach us about how not to live. Let's look at a few possibilities. One potential thesis from The Giver is that not...

The Annex is unique for several reasons. The door locks, The Giver lives alone, there are books, and the speaker has an off button. First of all, Jonas is surprised and a little nervous when he...

The central conflict of The Giver is Jonas versus his society. Although he accepts his society's rules without question early in the novel, through his work with the Giver, Jonas realizes that the...

In The Giver, the four qualities the Chief Elder says the Receiver of Memory must have are intelligence, integrity, courage, and wisdom. In addition, the Receiver of Memory must have the “Capacity...

If we're looking for metaphors in a novel, we can find them on two levels: either placed into a single sentence, or used more extensively and symbolically. First, there's the "sentence" level. The...

In Chapter 10, Jonas visits the Annex where the Giver resides. Initially, Jonas has to wait in the lobby and is greeted by a secretary who buzzes him in. Jonas finds this odd considering that no...

The community is very different from our own in many ways. We do not know the exact location or time period, although since it is dystopian/fantasy fiction we usually think of it as being set some...

Jonas is apprehensive about the Ceremony of Twelve, and then reflective about the effect of the things the community is missing. Jonas is very careful about language. He spends some time trying to...

Volunteering hours represent preparation for adulthood. In the community, all children begin preparing for their adult roles long before they are adults. They do this by volunteering in various...

The people chose Sameness in order to control everything in their environment and their citizens, to prevent anyone from feeling discomfort. At first, Jonas does not see anything unusual about...

In addition to the unique aspects of Jonas's community listed above, in this community, couples do not simply procreate and produce children of their own that they then raise. In fact, spouses do...

In The Giver, due to "sameness," most of the people look very similar to each other, especially since no one can see color until Jonas gives back the memories at the end of the book. Jonas is only...

In chapter 15, the Giver transmits a traumatic memory of war to Jonas. Jonas experiences the horrors of being seriously injured on a bloody battlefield and witnesses death all around him. Despite...

In chapter 4, Jonas volunteers at the House of the Old, where he bathes an elderly woman named Larissa. While Jonas is bathing Larissa, she tells him that they celebrated the release of an elderly...

In The Giver by Lois Lowry, memory represents the world that has been lost, or more accurately the world that has been erased. Because the society in which Jonas lives is tightly controlled, many...

The Giver is a 1993 young adult novel by Lois Lowry. It tells the story of a twelve-year-old boy called Jonas. Society in The Giver has converted to "Sameness." It has taken away emotions from...

In the book, "precision of language" means using the correct words to convey the exact thought the speaker intends to communicate. In other words, by using precise language, the speaker can...

Family units are created by a committee. The purpose of the family unit is to raise children between the ages of 1 year and adulthood. There is no love, and families do not have their own...

I have always thought that the meaning of this statement is that the control the community gained was a tradeoff for what was lost, i.e., "let go." This included feelings such as love, warmth,...