The Giver

I've just finished reading The Giver by Lois Lowry. I have to admit it was beautifully written and sucked me in from the very first page. I finished the entire book in one evening, all 179 pages.

So kudos to Ms. Lowry for her excellent, suspenseful writing. But the story line..well, the words "trite" and "overdone" came to mind. It seems to me that ever since I was a child I've been reading books about communities that instill mindless conformity and manipulate reality in order to keep the population under control. This is just another of those stories, even if the writing is outstanding.

I could name several books this one reminded me of. It's not as brutally coercive as 1984, but there's recommended physical punishment of young children and the elderly. There are endless rules that even restrict one's use of language. Jonas is scolded for his use of a vague, meaningless term like "love." One of the rules is to use language "precisely." Thus, exaggeration for effect, such as saying one is starving when really just hungry, is cause for reprimand. This reminded me very much of the manipulation of language through Newspeak in 1984.

Those who don't conform, die. That's a pervasive theme throughout many of these dystopian novels. Certainly it is central in 1984 and also in Logan's Run (where it is a capital offense to turn 30 years old without presenting oneself for immediate termination). "Release" is the euphemism for state-sanctioned murder here. But it is treated as something positive (similar to Brave New World, where children visited the hospices and were given ice cream on the day someone died), and the polite fiction that the "released" persons are sent "Elsewhere" is maintained.

The ugly secret is that not just the elderly are put to death (which is bad enough), but anyone who doesn't fit in, even the smaller of a set of twins or a baby who is fretful at night, can be "released" if the community decides this is necessary. Jonas discovers to his horror that his "father" (no child is raised by his or her biological parents) who appears to adore children, is capable of casually murdering newborn infants, all the while talking to them in the same cheerful patter as if he were nurturing them. Irony of ironies, his profession is called Nurturer!

Meanwhile, Jonas is being trained to become the next Receiver of Memory. This is an important position because the community has chosen to forget many things: love, family, strong emotions of any kind, any kind of suffering, and even colors and music, in order to remain safe and comfortable. They have given up way too much, it is abundantly clear. But Jonas, under his training by the former Receiver, now the Giver, is rediscovering the memories of ecstatic pleasure and unspeakable pain, and he comes to the realization that his community has given up too much. If he leaves, the memories he has received will be released and his community will have to experience and deal with them. They will therefore be forced out of their conformist complacency and made to face the realities of life again.

What happens at the end? It's not clear whether Jonas, escaping with little Gabriel, a baby scheduled for release because he cries too much at night (colicky babies beware!) finds a community living the way we do, with love, with family, with all the attendant pleasures and pains of existence, or whether he and the baby perish in the first real snow he has ever seen.

I also felt this book has its roots in the propaganda movies of the fifties. I saw similarities to movies like "It Came From Outer Space," and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The people in Jonas's community have given up so much and are living in such color-blind and tone-deaf conformity to the "Rules," which govern them to the point where no one makes an independent choice of mate or profession, that they appear as soulless as the Pod People. Is Lowry striking out at "Godless Communism?" Probably not but her use of a Christmas tree in the loving family scene Jonas "remembers" suggests that part of her objection to the conformity of the community includes their jettisoning of Christianity in favor of rules that restrict their every action, every word and every thought.

I am sure we will have a great discussion because even though the subject matter is in fact overplayed and has been done many times before, the details of the story will give us plenty to talk about. This book is only 15 years old and I can't help thinking that Lowry borrowed her ideas from the dystopian classics. However, she certainly did do an excellent job of it.