I'm going to begin writing my final thesis for my Archetypes on Children's Literature course soon, and since I'm writing on the archetypes of dystopia in Lois Lowery's The Giver series, I thought it was time to tell you about The Giver. I hope you don't mind that this isn't a formal review, but a love note to my favorite book as a fan.
The Giver is quite simply my favorite book. I first read it for the first time in the 6th grade and again in the 7th grade, again in high school, again in college, and had it read to me in Mexico after accidentally overdosing on Advil after my muscles locked up from horse back riding for the first time in my life. I've flipped through it many more times as well.
Lowry, in the form of kid's book, creates the best use of dystopia/utopia I've ever come across in literature. George Orwell's 1984 or Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, or Aldus Huxley's Brave New World or even the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin are explicit situations of dystopia in which no person would ever want to live in those worlds. The Giver is different.
The world of The Giver is a rather logical conclusion to the wants of society. Lowry's world is a seductive one, without poverty, without the knowledge of death, without war or rudeness or broken families. Family units care for one an other and society does well to fed and provide for its citizens. Upon each citizen's 12th birthday they are assigned a career, based on the volunteering that person has done and their personality traits. Everyone is content and happy. Don't be confused that happiness is joy, however.
In return for a life free of debt, crime, illness, and fear the community long ago traded in color, and love, and holidays, and family by birth, and choice. There is one person who retains knowledge and memories of the world before Sameness, The Receiver. Upon Jonas' 12th birthday he is selected to become the next Receiver as the current one is retiring.
The old Receiver, whom Jonas calls The Giver seeing that the old man is "giving" Jonas knowledge, is not the quintessential archetype of The Sage as you may believe. Oh yes, he is old and weathered. He does provides guidance. He is in the community to solve problems should one arise due to his wisdom. But he is apart by choice. He has a disdain towards the community that Jonas does not understand.
Jonas begins to receive memories of the past and learns of mountains to sled down (traded away for better land for farming), and sunshine (traded away for controlled weather) and love and Christmas (traded away due to pain of loss). Jonas becomes agitated with his friends for not knowing what love is. He feels restricted by knowing a world of joy and sorrow and can't express it to his family unit nor to his community since they chose not to know so they can be content in their pain-free existence.
He decides to run away. When the previous Receiver-in-training quit the memories of the past flooded back into the minds of the community. Jonas hopes that by running away his year's worth of memories will disperse back into the community and they will know what grandparents and love and joy really mean.
He flees. It takes many weeks, but in the end he finds himself on top of hill with a sled in front of him. Christmas lights twinkle below.
When I read the book as a child it was so fucking clear to me how right Jonas was. I too was agitated at his friends for not understanding. I too felt the apartness of The Giver. I could sympathize with the world lacking in death and chaos, but what is a world without love?
As I have gotten older I have seen pain. I have been hungry when I didn't have the cash for groceries. I have been freezing and shaking without heat and wishing someone could make it warmer outside. Christmas is coming and presents I can't afford will need to be bought. A war has been fought for 9 years now and no one seems to care. Bodies are piling up, but no weapons of mass destruction have ever been found. And I have seen death. I saw my grandmother hooked up to IVs in the hospital with an oxygen mask covering her screams. My grandpa on my mother's side slowly succumbed to liver cancer and I watched as his skin turned yellow and his words became gibberish. My father died when I was 18. Too many surgeries. The holes in his intestine and bladder were sealed but he didn't take care of himself. Blood everywhere. I picked out his dark oak casket on a Monday. And my future death--that scary question of what comes after if anything? I wouldn't mind living in a world without these things.
And yet. And with all of the hungry, death, and pain I've seen and have felt, I wouldn't trade love and holidays and sunshine next to a pool and snowy mountains with a hot cup of tea. Despite the world, I would still run away with Jonas to Elsewhere.
There has been much written about the idea of socialism in the book and I would personally dispute it to a point. Sure, the argument can be clearly made that Jonas' community is socialist but since the solution has little to do with neither political nor economic structures, the argument appears almost mute to me. What I do see it as it an alert for any political or social structure that requires too much sacrifice. Safety in exchange for privacy, anyone?
There has also been things written about the use of genders in this community. Play productions of this book have featured The Giver as being an old woman, for instance. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that Lowry's next book in the series features a female protagonist.
Which brings me to the end of this entry, and to honest, the reason I wrote this entry in the first place. I'm going to be reading the rest of the books in the series for the very first time to gather up proper evidence for my thesis. I don't really want to. I want Jonas to remain on that hill, ready to sled down to meet up with a new family and a new life. That's the funny thing about utopias; we don't have to grow up if we don't want to. But I guess it's time.
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