The Giver

Lois Lowry

4 ideas

1. Jonas watches his father 'release' an infant

   Jonas, newly trained as Receiver of Memory, watches a recording of his father, a gentle Nurturer, choosing the lighter of two identical twin newborns for 'release.' His father injects the baby with a lethal drug, speaks cheerfully to it, and puts the body down a chute. Jonas learns that 'release,' which the community describes as a pleasant departure Elsewhere, is killing, and that the adults who carry it out do so calmly because they have no memories through which to recognize death.

2. Receiver of Memory as containment vessel

   The society does not destroy its painful history. It stores all of it in one person, the Receiver, so that everyone else can live without it while elders still have wisdom to consult on novel decisions. Concentrating memory this way turns collective knowledge into a private burden. When that memory is released back to the public, the whole community has to feel what it has been avoiding.

3. Eliminating pain also eliminates joy and love

   The community removed suffering by removing the conditions that produce strong feeling: color, weather, choice, sexual desire, and memory of history. The book argues that happiness and pain come as a pair, and that a society engineered to prevent one will lose the other.

4. Precise language as a tool of control

   Controlling vocabulary keeps people from naming what is actually happening, so 'release' can stand in for death. Read this way, strict language rules can suppress meaning while appearing to demand accuracy.

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