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The main idea and underlying meaning of The Giver

Summary:

The main idea and underlying meaning of The Giver revolve around the importance of individuality, memory, and emotions in defining human experience. The novel critiques a society that sacrifices freedom and deep connections for the sake of superficial peace and sameness, ultimately emphasizing the value of personal choice and the richness of life's complexities.

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What is the main idea of The Giver?

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 Sameness.  Unfortunately, the Sameness didn't only get rid of the bad human emotions.  The society also doesn’t experience joy, pleasure, or love.  In fact, when the people decided to go with the Sameness, they even gave up the memory of those things.  

As he spends time with the Giver, Jonas learns more about the Sameness and the repercussions of it.  Jonas eventually decides that a society that is living without the ability to experience or remember any kind of emotion isn’t really living at all.  

“Our people made that choice, the choice to go to the Sameness.  Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when...

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we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences.”  He thought for a moment. “We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.”

“We shouldn’t have!” Jonas said fiercely.  

At some point in the past, the society thought that they would be better off without pain.  But in order to be truly free of pain, the people had to give up their memories of those things. However, before implementing the Sameness, the Elders did note that some memories are valuable.  That’s what I think the novel’s main idea is.  Memory is important.  The elders believe that only certain memories are important.  They don’t want mistakes to be repeated over and over again, so that is why they have a Receiver of Memory.  The society that Jonas lives in believes that it is truly better off with the Sameness and the missing memories; however, through Jonas and his experience with the Giver, readers come to the realization that all memories are equally valuable.  In order to understand true happiness, a person must be able to compare it with something.  Jonas is able to understand what happiness is only when the Giver allows him to remember pain and sorrow.  

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All dystopian fiction shares one basic idea: a perfect world is usually far from perfect.  A "utopia" is a perfect world.  A dystopia is a world that first appears perfect, but turns out to be terribly wrong under the surface.

This book is clever because it makes the dystopia point so simply.  The main idea of The Giver specifically is that sameness is not the same thing as perfection--difference should be celebrated and not feared.  The community works so hard to keep everything the same, and prevent discomfort, that they do things like beat toddlers for using the wrong word and kill newborn infants because they have a twin.  Mistakes are not tolerated, and anyone who breaks a rule three times is killed.  There is no love, and no real emotion at all. 

While it is true that all of the things that make us human are painful (love, passion, disagreement, choice), they are also what makes life worth living.  Life without love, without memory, is horrifying.

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What is the underlying meaning of The Giver?

The Giver illustrates the vital importance of the freedom to make one's own decisions and the necessity of accepting negative emotions and experiences along with positive ones in our current way of life. In the novel, Lois Lowry provides a demonstration of the horrific realities of a society in which pain and suffering have effectively been removed. She shows us the costs that would be associated with achieving this seemingly utopian reality.

The fact that Jonas, as the new Receiver of Memory, feels the need to escape from the community, thereby ushering in a new era of what we as readers would consider "normal," gives us an indication of how strange and unnatural life in this community is. It is a world in which babies are separated from their mothers at birth; where deformed babies, together with the elderly and disobedient, are deemed useless to society; and where emotions have been all but eradicated.

By pointing out how very peculiar and disturbing a world like this is, Lowry points out the beauty of the world we live in. Despite all the pain and hardship we endure, this book serves as a reminder of the power of loving family relationships and friendships, of memories, and of the ability to make one's own decisions.

In short, the meaning behind The Giver is to remind us of the importance of the ability to make our own decisions and not have every aspect of our lives controlled by a governing body.

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What is The Giver about?

The Giver is a Utopian novel, meaning it is about a future Utopian, or perfect, society. No one there feels strong emotions, no one sees color and everyone knows their roles in the society. Every year, when the children turn 12, they are given their assignment. This will be the training they will undergo for their career. Jonas is given an assignment that he has never heard of before. He is told he will be 'the receiver. He is very worried because he has never heard of this although many around him speak of this as being an honor. It still seems everyone is very surprised. Jonas finds out that 'the giver' holds all the memories from society long before this new perfect society was formed. The giver remembers colors, pain, books...etc. It is Jonas's duty to receive these memories. As he goes through this process though, he finds out some frightening things about this perfect way of living and must decide what he will do with his new knowledge. There is a lot of inner conflict and self discovery in this novel.

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What is the main idea in The Giver?

I have edited your question to fit enotes requirements. Remember, you are only allowed to ask one question per day. As with any work of literature, there can be any number of identifiable themes. The Giver is no different in inviting a wide number of different interpretations that might focus on topics such as what it is to be human, the relationship between pain and pleasure, and the role of the individual. For me, however, more important than these themes is the role of memory.

What is interesting about this book is that the author was inspired to write it after visiting her aging father who had lost his long term memory. This led her to realise that without memory there is an absence of pain. If you forget experiences that caused pain in your past life it is as if the pain did not exist. Jonas is part of a community that at some stage decided to eradicate pain by eradicating memory. This allows them to create the perfect utopian society, where members are free to live in happiness, but also are free of urges to engage in any activities that will bring unhappiness to them and the community of which they are a part. As Jonas discovers, however, memory (and the suffering that often accompanies it) is necessary to truly live - the half lives that his friends and family live as depicted in the novel make this truly clear. The unescapable message of this novel is that pain and suffering is part of the human condition and makes life the rich tapestry of experiences that it is. If we forsake our ability to suffer by eradicating memory, we are not truly human.

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