Customer Reviews

The Giver

5 star:		(1,268)
4 star:		(667)
3 star:		(172)
2 star:		(54)
1 star:		(83)

 

 

Try to imagine a huge idea of a team of twisted scientists come to life: solitary, colourless, perfect communities. No one is stressed, no one is hateful, and everyone ACTUALLY uses precise language ( Eh-hem, unlike some places now... ). However, all this changes when one Utopian citizen, Jonas, is selected to "recieve" memories of the past, when pain was inevitable, and love was treasured, not called "obsolete and general."

I am 12-going-on-13, and have read The Giver for 7th Grade. But, oh, how it has touched me. There is something about Lowry's admirable writing that is slightly sci-fi and simple, but extremely beautiful. I've probably read this book 6 times over already, and my teacher has indicated my potential as being a Receiver of Memory, like Jonas ( don't ask ).
This book is UNDENIABLY thought-provoking and an amazing treasure. It will keep you thinking about our world again and again, how such SIMPLE things like hugs and music and COLOUR should be treasured. The Giver definetely deserves 5 stars of 5!
P.S: Read "The Face of Love" by Apple Pie on Fanfiction.net. I SWEAR, you are NOT a Giver fan until you've read it.

My class, Scott Bateman Middle School in The Pas, read this book and we thought it was great! It's very different compared to some of the books I have read. I recommend it if you want a book that is kinda like a fantasy book. However, I thought that it should of continued because it seemed like the book didn't end.

The main character Jonas isn't happy with the form of government in his community, so what do you think he will do, run away? Well that was hard to figure out. No suspense or action is to be found in this boring novel.

...
I'm the most bookish member of my family, and the only professional writer (pharmacology, medicine, government regulatory horrors) in the house. As such, I've often been called upon to handle the kids' -- and now the grandkids' -- difficulties with school work. My eldest granddaughter had been tasked with a summer reading assignment centered upon Lois Lowry's novel *The Giver* (1993), and she brought it to me because she was directed to read it with an adult. Her mother and both her grandmothers decided that I'm the adult. Oh, well.

To skip forward a bit, as the granddaughter is now obliged to deal with the wad of photocopied work requirements associated with this book, I've been digging through the Internet to find background on this novel, and some sort of insight into the teacherly impulses so obviously behind the pre-packaged study assignments dumped on the poor kid in June. In the process, I've discovered (to no surprise whatsoever) that there's a massive presence for this horrible thing among the ex-education majors.

Understand, please, that I'm a science fiction fan. I'm thoroughly steeped in the genre. I also get my living through research and analysis, and spotting logical inconsistencies, intellectual sloppiness, and lapses in reasoning is the habit of a lifetime. I also used to read a lot of children's and young adult literature when my children were of an age to plough through such stuff, and I found much of it well-enough written to be pretty admirable.

When I began reading *The Giver* with my granddaughter (who's a bit dyslexic, and needs plenty of help to translate text-on-page into thoughts-in-mind), I kept turning from the contents to the cover, unable to believe that this thing had actually won a Newberry Award. This book was supposed to be on a par with *Maniac Magee*? Or *A Wrinkle in Time*? Or even a second-place finisher like *My Side of the Mountain*? Then I checked out the Newberry Awards list, and took note of more than a decade of Major Suckage in kids' literature (to which, I confess, I've paid not a whole lot of attention in the years between my own kids' growing-up and the rise to reading of my grandchildren).

"Ah," I realized. "John Taylor Gatto's *Dumbing Us Down* with a vengeance. Of course."

*The Giver* falls into a speculative fiction genre commonly known as "the dystopia novel," which includes Ayn Rand's *Anthem* (1938) as one of the earlier examples. To the limitedly literate, Orwell's *1984* is perhaps the best example of this sort of "if this goes on" procedural, drawing horrible future visions from what are supposed to be lucidly reasoned extrapolations of societal ghodawfulness either proposed or actually in train at the time of writing. There are many more examples, one of them being *An Enemy of the State* by fellow physician F. Paul Wilson, written during the galloping inflation of Jimmy Carter's idiotic presidency.

As a dystopia novel, *The Giver* is an example of Extreme Major Suckage. It is fundamentally dishonest as speculative fiction, and Ms. Lowry is wonderfully fortunate in that the majority of children today -- the victims of "dumbed-down" government schools -- are not customarily exposed to books like Alexander Key's *The Forgotten Door* or the juvenile novels written by Robert Heinlein during his contract with Scribners' in the '50s.

(At this point I recommend that the people praising *The Giver* read Heinlein's *Between Planets* [1951] or his *Citizen of the Galaxy* [1957]. Compare Don Harvey of the former book -- or Thorby Baslim of the latter -- to Jonas of *The Giver*, character developed against character, situation contrasted against situation, context versus context, and consider that not only were Heinlein's books written for kids of the same age as my 12-year-old granddaughter but they hit print about 40 years *before* Ms. Lowry published *The Giver*.)

The plenum -- the "world" -- of *The Giver* is logistically untenable. That's a fancy way of saying that it's too damned fragile to survive for any appreciable time as Lowry has described it. Societal systems of such cloying control, if they were liable to a breach such as that effected by Jonas in the story, would have been ripped to shreds long before the events of this novel.

This is an important defect, inasmuch as speculative fiction of both types -- science fiction and fantasy -- relies heavily upon sustaining the reader's willing suspension of disbelief. Even with the factitious mental retardation inculcated by government schooling, I don't see much chance that a reasonably rational child of ten or twelve years' age could ever manage to get past the "Sameness" bilge (*Induced* absolute color blindness? Gimme a break!) much less the total suppression of human ingenuity and initiative needed to preserve the sociocultural stasis depicted in this novel.

To put this in context, consider that the average episode of *Spongebob Squarepants* provides a deeper insight into human nature than does *The Giver*. Besides that, the Square One lives in a fantasy plenum -- Bikini Bottom and all the silliness therein -- that's actually better thought-out and more tightly integrated than the community depicted in Ms. Lowry's novel.

I understand why the ex-education majors (the public school teachers) like *The Giver*. After all, it's been "machined" to death with all sorts of off-the-shelf study points and similar pap to be regurgitated by the luckless student (which means that the teachers can stick it to their victims with about as much thought and effort as an oyster expends in getting his lunch), and it's not exactly an intellectual challenge. Education majors, after all, are without doubt the dumbest damned people graduating from college (see cumulative US military Stanford-Binet scores on officer candidates according to undergraduate major subject area; the three lowest-scoring categories every year are education, home economics, and physical education).

Beyond that, though, public school teachers are the most thoroughly "velvet fascist" folks in the country. Think of them as Mussolini's blackshirts with an ostensibly kinder, gentler face -- and a better public relations apparatus. These clowns secretly *admire* the "Sameness" in Ms. Lowry's book, and love to drown the kiddies in noise about how wonderful Jonas' community would be if only the governing thugs weren't as much inclined to have people "released" as is the average Texas politician.

Yeah, right.

...

This is a bit of an basic book, but a good discussion for a Book Club. It is a very quick and easy read; full of interesting thoughts about what a `perfect' society would be like. It had the answers to all of our difficult questions. "What role do I play in society?" "How do we handle heath care?" "Who will look after us when we are old and unable to?" "Will I find a life partner?", etc., etc..

This book is truly a gem. It is a children's book but I feel that it is an excellent read for any age. It is thought provoking, intelligent and it really makes you think about the culture in which we are raised.

***CONTAINS SPOILERS!!***

Always on the lookout to find new reads that don't put a dent in my pocketbook, I borrowed this book from a friend - well, from my friend's daughters' bookshelf. Totally unaware of what to expect, this anti-utopian science fiction novel, The Giver by Lois Lowry is a powerful book about what is thought to be a 'perfect' society.

Jonas is entering his Twelfth year in this society (no dates are given in the book, but it is assumed to be a fair distance in the future), the year where each child in their Twelfth year is assigned a job chosen for them by The Elders based on their strengths observed in their previous years. Jonas's friends are assigned normal jobs ' Director of Recreation and Caretaker of the Old ' but Jonas had been chosen for something different, The Receiver of Memory.

The community is unlike anything we know today. It has reverted to 'Sameness' ' the concept of colour is unknown by anyone, everyone wears the same 'uniforms', and for each year of a childs' life it is expected that they will get a certain item (such as a bicycle when one enters their Ninth Year, or a coat with buttons in the front when they enter their Fourth Year). The people of the community do not know love or happiness, nor do they know anything of pain or suffering. Rather than inflict these feelings on the entire society, it is the Receiver of Memory's job to keep these memories for when situations come up where the society needs to be advised on how to take care of the situation.

Similar to George Orwell's 1984, there are speaker systems throughout the community which are used as surveillance (such as keep uneaten food ' something Jonas does with an apple he and his friend Asher had been playing with) or for announcements. Life is planned out for everyone and no one is capable of choice. A person in the society can apply for a spouse (who would be picked by the Elders) and then that couple can apply for children, but only a boy and a girl for each couple. It is the job of the Birthmothers to give birth to the children, but if the new children do not meet the qualifications of the community, they are 'released' instead of being able to enter society.

The book is very powerful. At first it was very similar to George Orwell's 1984 or M. Night Shyamalan's movie, The Village. As I read on, it blew my mind how crazy this society was. I felt sorry for Jonas and the burden he would have to carry being the Receiver of Memory (ultimately carrying the memories of pain, sadness, loss, torture, etc. on his shoulders), and when he asked his 'parents' if they love him (their response being that that was an absurd question seeing as they do not know of love).

I would recommend anyone who's interested in books about dystopia to read this. Lowry's writing is very straightforward and easy to follow, though the subject can be hard to handle at times (especially when one learns what it means to be released). However, it is a great book to teach people to be grateful for what they have and to show them how nice it is that we all ARE different ' seeing as in this community birthdays aren't singled out for people, nor are they encouraged to be different.

For a book so simply written, The Giver has so much depth that I think it stands up to other books of the genre. It is well-crafted and is sure to make an impact on any reader.

I absolutely love this novel. I first read it in grade 6 as a class study and have read it every year since- I am now going into my third year of university. I wanted to have a good copy, a hard cover that will be durable through out the years. Lowry uses and describes a unique world to showcase what the world would be like without pain and suffering and makes one thankful for the suffering they do endure. You can't experience true happiness without harsh pain and Lowry in this novel depicts that fact through a timeless story line.

As a middle school teacher, I have read this book, always aloud, to at least five different classes. Every time it gets to me. This book is a must-read, but it actually needs to be read over again, and talked about. It is fascinating how many different ways the messages in this book can be interpreted. My favourite question at the very end is, "What just happened?". The answers are amazing!

This is an awesome book. It is a futuristic novel that makes the reader realize all parts of their lives they now take for granted. It's easy to see why a society would choose to go the "convenient" route that is showcased in this book. Only two people dare to think and challenge the system - a terrific ending!