The Giver:

By; Lois Lowry

Page number: 179

Originally published: 1993

"For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing." (pg.179)

Thoughts:

Understanding anything is through experiences and associations. To comprehend a concept, we first use our senses to experience it, then compare it with our outside knowledge. To truly understand something’s existence and significance is to recognize it from its opposite.

How can one see the light when there is no darkness, or understand the existence of the color white without ever seeing black? How will I know what joy is if I have never felt agony?

Life is the collection of highs and lows that generates growth. As spring comes only after the dead of winter pass, our mental space goes through some obstacles that give way to nourishment and growth. Fighting and making bonds, feeling hungry and full, owning and losing, loving and hating are there so that we can experience the bad to truly sense the good. Being aware of the contrary makes you aware of the monotony.

In the book, The Giver, author Louis Lowry created a dystopian and monotonic world of Sameness where every decision of the residents is assigned to them by the Elders. The set of rules that everyone obeys is centered around the prohibition of expressing your individuality, making decisions for yourself, and feeling negative senses. Showing grief in a loved one’s departure or loving your partner is forbidden as sadness and passion are seen solely as destructive, rather than natural emotions.

Although Sameness is constructed in a way that would leave no chance for hunger, poverty, or unemployment, the extreme limitations on free will and space for human growth cause the creation of a community of numbed individuals.

In the Sameness, no one sees the colors of the world, nobody questions their past or the future, no one doubts the morality of their actions, no one truly loves, no child stays with their birth mother, and no option other than death is given to those that are unsatisfied. Jonas, after being given the bizarre job of being The Receiver, can realize all that he is missing and, for the first time, doubt the ethics of the system that was established in his world.

With its simple language and interesting storyline, Lowry’s book is a worthwhile piece that will provoke sociological and ethical questions in the reader’s head. The author published three sequence books following the Giver (Messenger, Gathering Blue, and Son) that continue to dive deeper into the mysteries of the world that Jonas was once part of.

personal rating of the book: 8/10