The Limited Society of The Giver

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Before I delve into The Giver, I want to begin with a disclaimer about my feelings towards dystopian novels: I generally don't enjoy them. I read The Hunger Games when I was in 7th grade (right before it became big) and I read the first Divergent novel in high school at my friend's insistence. I enjoyed The Hunger Games (and loved the movie adaptation). However, I'm starting to get tired of the dystopian trend. It seems overdone and trite. That being said, I tried to read The Giver with fresh eyes, as it was the first of this kind of novel. I tried to remind myself that Lowry's creations were perhaps more impressive than her successors' because she was one of the first to begin this specific sub genre of YA lit.

That being said, one thing that I always feel when reading dystopian novels, that they're far-fetched, came to mind again when reading The Giver. There are always lots of inconsistencies in dystopian lit, because it's really hard to create a world devoid of all of our modern technologies, it's hard to write a society with no cultural memory when the author themselves has one, and all readers have one. For example, the part about the kids having bikes, and riding bikes early being one rule that everyone broke, seemed....odd and out of place. Another inconsistency I noticed was about Rosemary, the Giver's daughter. The Giver is depicted as being very very old. His wife has long passed. Rosemary was the last receiver the town selected, 10 years ago. This means Rosemary wouldn't be more than 22 if she were still alive. This makes the Giver only about 50 at most. I don't understand why Lowry couldn't just say the town picked the last receiver 20 or 30 years ago, which would sort out all these problems. A third inconsistency which really bothered me was the mention of peoples' light colored eyes. Early in the novel, Jonas mentions that he has light eyes while his whole family has dark eyes. Right away, I took note of this and assumed it would have importance. When Gabriel came into their lives and Jonas says he has light eyes, I again assumed Gabriel would play an important role. The fact that he is behind developmentally and has these "special" eyes made me assume he was different, and was perhaps a future receiver too. This is confirmed by the fact that Jonas can transfer memory to Gabriel. The Giver, naturally, has light eyes as well. This is made out to be a symbol throughout the book. However, an inconsistency lies in the fact that Jonas says a random little girl in the book is also light eyed. Lowry never addresses this again. This inconsistency made me question the purpose of the light eyes in the Giver, Jonas, and Gabriel.

All that being said, however, I did enjoy some aspects of this book and I thought its message was important. I liked some of the concepts Lowry came up with in her world which differed from other dystopian novels. I like the aspect of the world having regulated temperature and no color. I thought this really drove the point of conformity home that the citizens were not even permitted to see variance in colors. I liked the simplicity of the novel as well. In other dystopian novels, the city is always eventually overcome with a huge war, as it is in the Hunger Games. I like that his novel focused only on Jonas and ended very simply with him leaving the community, thereby giving the cultural memory back. Overall, I think the book makes important points about the importance of individuality, complex emotions and experiences, and having a united culture. I definitely don't think the society depicts a utopia. It's stale and weird and limited. The part of the novel that really made me see the dangers of such a limited society was Jonas's relationship with his parents. It was so awkward how they were forced to talk about their dreams and emotions every day and then immediately squash them. It was weird how you were forced to accept people's apologies when the root problem was never actually solved, just squashed down. The scene when Jonas asks his parents if they love him and they laugh at him and say, "you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," really shows readers the limitations of this society (Lowry 159-160). This scene is also very powerful because it is the moment when Jonas truly understands how limited society is. He lies to his parents about choosing the wrong word, but he disagrees with them and ultimately plots to leave and give the memories back.

Though this book wasn't my favorite, I think it's useful to teach in high school classes because it's likely to get kids excited about reading and it brings up a lot of important, debatable concepts for discussion.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 9, 2017 at 7:37 PM

    Hey Caroline, I agree that dystopian novels tend to lack in explanation and can seem a bit forced. However, world-building can be incredible difficult and hard to squeeze into a book. Lowry did a good job of pushing as much information about the dystopian without making it seem too forced. Pushing too much information on the reader creates a history book, rather than a fiction one.

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