By Lois Lowry
I’ve been hearing about this book since I was in elementary school. Somehow nearly everyone around me read it, but I never did. It was never required reading for me. Now that I’ve gotten in the habit of using Libby aggressively and really leaning into audiobooks, I decided that I should fill in that gap.
Overall, I liked it. I enjoyed the way the nature of the world was slowly exposed to the reader and some of the unusual realities were revealed to the reader as they were discovered by the protagonist. The dystopian world wasn’t overly described. It’s a little hard to picture what the characters see and to imagine their feelings since the concept of sameness drops in later in the book. The world seemed familiar until then, even if the community’s rules were odd. No color, no sunshine, no sunburn, no snow, no hills, no love… weird.
It wasn’t too far different from other dystopian stories that were already familiar: Farenheit 451, 1984, Brave New World, Logan’s Run, The Matrix. The protagonist learns the dark truth about their society/government and tries to flee/reject it. Brave New World felt the most similar. The Giver was almost Brave New World adjusted for a younger audience. They both have a world where people have tried to smooth over the rough edges of life, removing a lot of things that would cause struggles or pain. In doing so, they also remove the possibility for people to experience the full range of human experience, including love. It’s almost like the dilemma that some people describe for psychiatric medications: is it worth removing the lows if it also removes the highs? Is there real life to be had in the flat middle? As a teenager, I didn’t agree with what I took as Brave New World’s message that freedom is superior to happiness. If I have happiness, what do I need freedom for? I felt the loss of love as a bigger impact while reading The Giver compared to my Brave New World experience.
When I was reflecting on these dystopian tales, it occurred to me that they seem to repeat the original sin story, but promote the opposite message. Neo and Jonas learn the truth and rebel against the pacifying illusion. They are heroes in their stories. Eve eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and is punished for it. Neo and Jonas also suffer for their choice, but it’s framed as the good choice. I’m not aware of a heroic framing of Eve for learning the truth. I ended up spinning on that thought for awhile. I understand the perspective of the dystopian future authors, but it’s confusing to make sense of the Garden of Eden story. God makes everything, including the people, then builds a trap for them, gets them to trigger the trap, then punishes humanity for the rest of time for triggering of the trap that he made. I spent some time interrogating ChatGPT to explain it to me. It’s still unsatisfying.
The Giver was good though, and I assumed that Jonas was dead at the end.