The Giver

Laurin_B · Post by **Laurin_B** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 1:36 pm

Some of us were chatting in the Jonas section, and someone pointed out that the main character in Lois Lowry's The Giver is named Jonas. We came across some other similarities:
1. Children are placed with "adopted" parents.
2. There's a ceremony performed for the elderly, etc. called the "Ceremony of Release."
3. Hearing music is considered to be a special gift. In trying to achieve "Sameness" certain genetic traits are considered to be anomalies and these mark certain people out, either positively or negatively. In Jonas' case, he can see color, and his Giver can hear music. This marks them out as being good candidates to be Receivers of Memory. They refer to as Capcity to See Beyond.
4. Emotions are suppressed (perhaps the "brainwashing" in Bree?)
5. The point of the whole exercise to achieve utopia.

These are just a few of the things I found, mostly from Wikipedia. (It's been a few years since I've read it

)

What does everyone else think? Something here?

Spades · Post by **Spades** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 2:27 pm

My younger cousin had to read the book for his English class.

I had thoughts like these but I pushed them aside, thinking they were not important.

But I thought that Jonas could see colors, and that is what made him special, being that everyone had been engineered or something to make the world black and white, or because they took all the memories of color and gave them to the Reciever, making it impossible for people to know what color was?

Here is a thought though: In reality, Jonas was not getting a great honor, instead he was being forced to hold all the memories of the world, many which included great suffering and anguish. They wanted to do this for two reasons, the first being that they did not want to deal with them, so they gave them all to one person, and two, it made the people easier to control.

Perhaps the Giver Jonas is more like Bree than LG15 Jonas. The Order will use her for their own reasons, and push aside her wants and needs.

Laurin_B · Post by **Laurin_B** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 2:51 pm

Yeah, I don't think that Jonas=Jonas. It just happened to come up that they shared characters with the same names, and then from there . . .
I don't know what any of it means, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Spades · Post by **Spades** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 2:54 pm

There is definitely some similarities between the two.

Melisa · Post by **Melisa** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 4:11 pm

I just thought I'd mention that I love the book. :]

JustAnotherLonelyGirl. · Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:46 pm

This has already come up somewhere, and I placed my thoughts there, but I thought I'd reiterate how utterly incredibly The Giver is. I read it in 4th grade, and it remains one of my top 5 books to this day.

Post by **Broken Kid** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 8:27 pm

This seems like a good discussion for the Reading List

allie · Post by **allie** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:57 pm

Melisa wrote:I just thought I'd mention that I love the book. :]

ditto

Shaneener · Post by **Shaneener** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 12:39 am

That book was great. <D

Actually, the moment I dicovered this series, I thought 'THE GIBBER!' when I saw Jonas.

(I caught up in about four days... I was caught up by 'The Human Ransom'. I first video I saw was 'First Kiss'. Or something like that. The video where Bree talks about Danny kissing her.)

BlogGirl14 · Post by **BlogGirl14** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 7:25 pm

hey its my theory! lol

exanimatebylove · Post by **exanimatebylove** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 6:50 pm

Dunno about the theory. But, good book.