Beautiful Dystopia: The Giver, by Lois Lowry

I read The Giver, by Lois Lowry sometime back in the 90’s, and again just this week, and my perception and appreciation of the book have definitely changed. Perhaps it’s just age, and experience. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived most of my life in a fog. I wish I’d kept notes about my initial reaction to the book. What kept me from enjoying it last time the way that I did this time? If I wasn’t old enough to really appreciate it in the 90’s, how can young adults appreciate it? I’m sure there are plenty of thoughtful, sensitive young adults who can appreciate a book like The Giver, but I apparently wasn’t one of them.

I hardly remember what I made of the book the first time I read it, but I know that I gave it three stars out of five, which in Goodreads parlance means that I “liked it”. This week, I moved it up to four stars, which means that I “really liked it”. (The final category, five stars, means “it was amazing”, which is a ranking that I don’t give out too freely, though I debated it for this book.)

The story is of a community that has opted, for safety and predictability, to remove the things that complicate and endanger society. Of course, the things that make life complicated and dangerous are also the things that can make life exciting and beautiful. Life in the society has been relegated to that of Sameness, where the decisions of what job to pursue, or even who to marry, are made by a committee that is less likely to be swayed by foolish emotion. In fact, no one in the society is likely to be swayed much by emotion, as emotions themselves have been eliminated as much as possible.

When Jonas, the protagonist, is named as the new Receiver of Memory, he is tasked with inheriting all of society’s memories, both the beautiful and the painful, and the role has him asking himself some difficult questions about what the society has had to give up in order to achieve the level of safety and security that it has achieved.

I was absolutely sucked into the story when Jonas received his instructions on how to begin his new role as the Receiver of Memory. The short list ended with Number 8. “You may lie.” By this point in the story, this list of how to begin on his path as the Receiver of Memory rocked Jonas, and rocked me as a reader. The instructions that Jonas received, and the doubt and confusion they created, were phenomenally well written.

The story is wonderfully told. When the title character of The Giver has to inflict painful memories on Jonas, the horror of the event, and the pain it obviously causes both the Giver and Receiver, is simply and powerfully told.

The story ends promisingly, though not unambiguously. Jonas and Gabriel, a baby that Jonas has come to love, are on their way to a future and location that look hopeful, but we aren’t given the details of the outcome.

Maybe that ambiguous ending is what threw me last time. Now I’m happier with the ambiguity than I might have been twenty years ago.