The Giver

== Overview ==
The Giver is a young-Adult dystopian novel that was written by Lois Lowry. It was published in 1993. 
Within the Novel, society has taken away pain and strife by converting to what they call "Sameness" which has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. The society lacks any Color, Climate, Terrain, and a sense of equality that feels true. The story follows a young, twelve-year old boy who is selected to become the "receiver of memory", the person who stores all of the memories before the time of sameness. He struggles when these concepts are introduced to him, and whether they are good or evil, or in-between, and if you could have one without the other.
The year after it's release, The Giver won the 1994 Newbery Medal and it has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. In 2012. a survey by School Library Journal designated the book as the fourth-best children's novel of all time. It has been the subject of a large body of scholarly analysis with academics considering themes of memory, religion, color, and eugenics within the novel. In many countries, it is required on many of the core curriculum reading lists for middle-schoolers.
The Novel is the first in a loose quarlet of novels known as The Giver Quarlet with three subsequent Novels set within the same universe. Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son.
== Plot ==
Jonas, a twelve year old boy lives within a community isolated from all except a few similar towns, where everyone from infants to the Chief elder has been assigned a Role. With the annual ceremony of twelve, Jonas finds himself extremely nervous, for there he will be assigned his life's work. He seeks the reassurance of his father, a nurturer who cares for the new babies (which are genetically engineered), and his mother who is an official at the Department of Justice. He is told that the elders, who assign the children their careers, are always right.
The day of the ceremony finally arrives, and Jonas assembles with his classmates in order of birth. The Chief elder, who presides over the ceremony, initially passes over Jonas's turn. At the ceremony's conclusion, the Chief elder explains that Jonas has not been given a typical assignment like most, but has been selected to become the new Receiver of Memory. The position of Receiver has a very high status and responsibility, and Jonas quickly finds himself to be growing more and more distant from his classmates. The rules that Jonas receives further separates him, as they allow him absolutely no time to play with his friends and require him to keep his training to become the Receiver of memory secret. They allow him to lie and withhold his feelings from his family, which is generally not allowed in the community.
Once he begins his training, it makes his uniqueness clear, for the Receiver of memory is just that - a person who bears the burden of memories from all history, and the only one in the community who is allowed to access books beyond schoolbooks and the rulebook that is issued to every household. The current Receiver, who asks Jonas to call him "The Giver" begins the process of transferring the memories he holds to Jonas, for the ordinary person in the community knows nothing of the past. These memories, and being the only person in the community to access books about the past, give the Receiver perspective to advise the council of elders. The first memory is of sliding down a snow-covered hill on a sled, pleasantness made shocking by the fact that Jonas has never seen a sled, or snow, or a hill—for the memories of even these things have been given up to assure security and conformity (called Sameness). Even color has been surrendered, and the Giver shows Jonas a rainbow. Less pleasantly, he gives Jonas memories of hunger and war, things alien to the boy. Hanging over Jonas's training is the fact that the Giver once before had an apprentice, named Rosemary, but the boy finds his parents and the Giver reluctant to discuss what happened to her.
Jonas's father is concerned about an infant at the Nurturing Center who is failing to thrive and has received special permission to bring him home at night. The baby's name will be Gabriel if he grows strong enough to be assigned to a family. He has pale eyes, like Jonas and the Giver. Jonas grows attached to him, especially when Jonas finds that he can receive memories. If Gabriel does not increase in strength, he will be "released from the Community"—in common speech, taken Elsewhere. This has happened to an off-course air pilot, to chronic rule breakers, to elderly people, and to the apprentice Rosemary. After Jonas speculates about life in Elsewhere, the Giver educates him by showing the boy hidden-camera video of Jonas's father doing his job: releasing the smaller of two identical twin newborns through lethal injection before putting it in a trash chute, since identical community members are forbidden. There is no Elsewhere for those not wanted by the Community—those said to have been "released" have been killed.
Since he now considers his father a murderer, Jonas initially refuses to return home, but the Giver convinces him that without the memories, the people of the Community cannot know that what they have been trained to do is wrong. Rosemary was unable to endure the darker memories of the past and instead killed herself with the poison. Jonas and the Giver devise a plan to return the community's memories so they may know where they have gone wrong. Both agree that Jonas will leave the community thereby returning the memories to them, while the Giver will stay to help them learn to live with their memories before joining his daughter, Rosemary, in death. They plan to fake Jonas's drowning to limit the search for him, but he instead must escape in a rush with Gabriel, upon learning of the child's imminent release. The two are near death from cold and starvation when they reach the border of what Jonas believes must be Elsewhere. Using his ability to "see beyond", a gift that he does not quite understand, he finds a sled waiting for him at the top of a snowy hill. He and Gabriel ride the sled down towards a house filled with colored lights and warmth and love and a Christmas tree, and for the first time he hears something he believes must be music. The ending is ambiguous, with Jonas depicted as experiencing symptoms of hypothermia. This leaves his and Gabriel's future unresolved. However, their fate is revealed in Messenger and Son, companion novels written years later.
== Background ==
Lowry has stated that her books all explore "the importance of human connection… the vital need for humans to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment." Like Lowry's other books, The Giver shows changes in the characters' lives, reflecting this fascination in the multifaceted dimensions of growing up.
The Giver was initially inspired by Lowry's interaction with her father, who, in his senility, kept forgetting about the long-ago death of her sister; she imagined "a novel in which people are deprived of the memories of suffering, grief, and pain." She based the novel's setting in part on the closely guarded army bases in which she had grown up, her father having been an army dentist. She has stated, of the characters in The Giver, they have lived in a sterile world for so long that they are in danger of losing the real emotions that make them human.