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WoGF Review: The Giver by Lois Lowry
When Beth Besse (Badseedgirl) is not preparing for the coming zombie apocalypse, or having long, and often bitter arguments with her sister over whether “Night of The Comet” is actually a zombie movie (well of course it is, it even says it in the movie description), she can be found curled up somewhere in her Tennessee home reading SF and Horror of questionable quality. Her guilty pleasure reading almost always involves urban fantasies or Southern Fried Vampires. Her Goal is to be able to someday boast that she has read every title in at least one WWEnd book list. (And finally convince her sister that “Night of the Comet” is a Zombie movie)
A society where there is no hunger, where everyone is employed and happy in their job, no real illness. It sounds too good to be true, and as The Giver by Lois Lowry shows once again, that nothing comes without a price.
The story revolves around Jonas, a 12 year old boy who lives in what appears to be an idyllic community. Births are strictly regulated to 50 children a year, each family is allowed to have 2 children, one female and one male. All children born during the year celebrate their birthday on the same day. At age 12 all birthdays stop and the child is considered an adult and assigned a job. Jonas is assigned the job of “Receiver of Memories”. This person holds the collective memories of all the past receivers. He was given the memories in a form of mental transfer and taught how to use them by the current Receiver, known in the novel as “The Giver”.
The more memories he receives, the more Jonas realizes what society has given up in its quest to achieve “sameness”. Jonas’ faith in the system he was raised with is shaken to the core in one tragic viewing. The Giver realizes that things in the community are not right, but has felt powerless to change it. Together with Jonas, he devises a plan to help Jonas escape the community and in doing so: release all the memories Jonas has collected over the year from the Giver, and thus showing the people of the community what they have given up. Unfortunately events occur and Jonas is forced to flee without the benefits of the plan when a small child his family is fostering is endangered.
