Discussion Topic
Occupations requiring math in The Giver
Summary:
In The Giver, occupations that require math include Engineers, who design and construct buildings and infrastructure, and Doctors, who need mathematical knowledge for dosage calculations and medical procedures. Additionally, roles such as the Nurturers, who care for newborns, may also require basic math skills for tasks like measuring and recording growth statistics.
What occupations involving math are mentioned in chapters 6-10 of The Giver?
Occupations requiring use of math are Instructor, Engineer, and Doctor.
A community cannot function without math. Math is required to design buildings, distribute supplies, and for all aspects of technology. We know that technology is important in Jonas's community, and we can assume that high level math is as well.
The Instructor of Elevens is one occupation that requires math. One of the reasons we can tell this is because the calculator is so important to Elevens that they actually have special clothing for it. The boys are given trousers “with a specially shaped pocket for the small calculator that they would use this year in school” (Ch. 6). It does not say where the girls keep their calculators. Nonetheless, someone has to teach them how to use them.
Another occupation that requires math is Engineer. While waiting for the ceremony to begin, Asher shares a story about...
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a supposed former Eleven’s assignment.
"I heard about a guy who was absolutely certain he was going to be assigned Engineer," Asher muttered as they ate, "and instead they gave him Sanitation Laborer. He went out the next day, jumped into the river, swam across, and joined the next community he came to. Nobody ever saw him again." (Ch. 6)
Jonas tells him it is just a story, but you can see how children would be frightened by it. An Eleven with an affinity for math might expect to be an Engineer, and would be disappointed to end up with a less prestigious occupation like Sanitation Laborer. Engineer is probably a very valued job, requiring mathematical ability.
During the ceremony, a few other assignments are mentioned that require math, including Doctor and, once again, Engineer.
Jonas knew that each one was thinking about the training that lay ahead. For some--one studious male had been selected as Doctor, a female as Engineer, and another for Law and Justice--it would be years of hard work and study. (Ch. 7)
There are likely other occupations that require the use of math. It is hard to tell, because we are not told what all of the assignments are. Many jobs require math, in small ways or large ones. For instance, Fiona might use math as a Caretaker of the Old if she has to determine medical doses or nutrition intake.
In The Giver, which occupations in the community would require math?
If you asked my high school math teacher, he would say that math is involved in every job out there. In The Giver, some jobs are mentioned. We are told about nurturers, birth mothers, pilots, elderly care givers, and a selection of manual labor jobs. I suppose all of those jobs involve numbers and counting in some format, and that would be a rudimentary math skill. The pilots would be using much more advanced levels of math to calculate vectors, fuel loads, navigational points, and so on. The story doesn't give readers much detail about whether or not Jonas's society has money or not, but I would imagine that the society has some way of exchanging goods and services. It could be monetary, or it could be a barter system, and a normal citizen is going to use math skills to calculate the value of goods and/or services. Any citizen that is involved with food development or cooking is also going to use math skills. Measuring farmland and plot size would be one specific example. For cooking, any time the size of an order changes, every ingredient amount will also change. That would involve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and/or division. It would also likely involve fractions.
In The Giver, the occupation of Giver would be benefited greatly by abilities in math of all levels. The Giver's task, as he explains to Jonas, is to remember and transmit the memories "of the whole world." His apartment is lined with books. Though the first memory the Giver transmits to Jonas is the pleasurable and painful memory of snow, the books are archive of some of the world's greatest knowledge, greater than snow but not more important. The books contain the ideas of philosophers and mathematicians, for example, Euclid who wrote the first treatise on geometry, Copernicus who wrote a description of the cosmos that challenged Aristotle's description, and Newton's treatise on mechanical, or physical mechanics called the Principia. A knowledge of and an ability with math would certainly be important to the Giver as he remembers and transmits these and other great philosophical and mathematical works.