The Giver (Questions)

The Giver (Questions) 1. In The Giver, each family has two parents, a son, and a daughter. The relationships are not biological but are developed through observation and a careful handling of personality. In our own society, the makeup of family is under discussion. How are families defined? Are families the foundations of a society, or are they continually open for new definitions? 2. In Jonas’s community, every person and his or her experience are precisely the same. The climate is controlled, and competition has been eliminated in favor of a community in which everyone works only for the common good. What advantages might “Sameness” yield for contemporary communities? Is the loss of diversity worthwhile? 3. Underneath the placid calm of Jonas’s society lies a very orderly and inexorable system of euthanasia, practiced on the very young who do not conform, the elderly, and those whose errors threaten the stability of the community. What are the disadvantages and benefits of a community that accepts such a vision of euthanasia? 4. Why is the relationship between Jonas and The Giver dangerous, and what does this danger suggest about the nature of love? 5. The ending of The Giver may be interpreted in two very different ways. Perhaps Jonas is remembering his Christmas memory—one of the most beautiful that The Giver transmitted to him—as he and Gabriel are freezing to death, falling into a dreamlike coma in the snow. Or perhaps Jonas does hear music and, with his special vision, is able to perceive the warm house where people are waiting to greet him. In her acceptance speech for the Newbery Medal, Lois Lowry mentioned both possibilities but would not choose one as correct. What evidence supports each interpretation? 6. There are groups in the United States today that actively seek to maintain an identity outside the mainstream culture: the Amish, the Mennonites, Native American tribes, and the Hasidic Jewish community. What benefits do these groups expect from defining themselves as “other”? What are the disadvantages? How does mainstream culture put pressure on such groups? 7. Lois Lowry helps create an alternate world by having the community use words in a special way. Though that world stresses what it calls "precision of language," in fact it is built upon language that is not precise but deliberately clouds meaning. What is the danger of such misleading language? 8. Examine the ways in which Jonas’s community uses euphemism to distance itself from the reality of "Release." How does our own society use euphemism to distance us from such realities as aging and death, bodily functions, and political activities? What are the benefits and disadvantages of such uses of language? https://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/fiction/9023-giver-lowry?start=2 The Giver (About the Author) • Birth—March 20, 1937 • Where—Hawaii, USA • Education—B.A., M.F.A., University of Southern Maine • Awards—Newbery Medal (2) • Currently—lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts Lois Lowry is an American author of children's literature. She began her career as a photographer and a freelance journalist during the early 1970s. Her work as a journalist drew the attention of Houghton Mifflin and they encouraged her to write her first children's book, A Summer to Die, which was published in 1977 (when Lowry was 40 years old). She has since written more than 30 books for children and published an autobiography. Two of her works have been awarded the prestigious Newbery Medal: Number the Stars in 1990, and The Giver in 1993. As an author, Lowry is known for writing about difficult subject matters within her works for children. She has explored such complex issues as racism, terminal illness, murder, and the Holocaust among other challenging topics. She has also explored very controversial issues of questioning authority such as in The Giver quartet. Her writing on such matters has brought her both praise and criticism. In particular, her work The Giver has been met with a diversity of reactions from schools in America, some of which have adopted her book as a part of the mandatory curriculum, while others have prohibited the book's inclusion in classroom studies. https://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/fiction/9023-giver-lowry?start=2 The Giver (Reviews) A powerful and provocative novel New York Times Jonas lives in a perfect society. At the Ceremony of 12, Jonas is shocked to learn that he has been awarded the most prestigious honor. His assignment will be that of Receiver of Memories. He studies with "the Giver," a man he comes to love. Within time he learns the horrifying secrets of his community and must make a decision that will test his courage, intelligence, and stamina. This is a stunning, provocative science fiction story that will inspire discussion. Children's Literature Winner of the 1994 Newbery Medal, this thought-provoking novel centers on a 12-year-old boy's gradual disillusionment with an outwardly utopian futuristic society.... Lowry is once again in top form...unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers. Publishers Weekly In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged... Kirkus Reviews The Giver was so powerful because it's one of a rare few young adult books which leaves the ending up to you. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/sep/06/review-the-giver-lois-lowry https://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/fiction/9023-giver-lowry?start=2 The Giver (Enhancement) Lois Lowry Says 'The Giver' Was Inspired By Her Father's Memory Loss Just for a second, imagine a world without war, conflict or grief. Refreshing, right? But it's also a world without memory, at least in the premise of Lois Lowry's 1993 novel The Giver. The movie adaptation opened this week and stars Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges. The Giver swept up nearly every prestigious prize for young adult literature, including the Newbery Medal and the William Allen White Award. It's assigned reading in thousands of schools. Lowry came up with the idea of a scary, sterile world where nearly everyone takes drugs to suppress their memories and emotions after her father was put in a nursing home. "He didn't have Alzheimer's, but he began to lose pieces of his memory, the way people do as they age," she recalls. One day, she showed her father a photo of her sister, who died at the age of 28. "And he said, 'I can't remember her name,' and I told him her name," she says. "And he said, 'Whatever happened to her?' And I had to tell him about her death." Like so many who've suffered the pain of losing someone, Lowry considered — just passingly — how much better our existences might be if we didn't have memories at all. "And so I began to think about writing a book about people who had found a way to manipulate human memory, so they wouldn't have to remember anything bad," she explains. Lowry has written more than 40 books for kids and young adults, ranging from a historical novel about the Holocaust (Number the Stars) to a rollicking series about a suburban preteen and her family (the Anastasia Krupnik books) to a fictionalized account of her sister's passing (A Summer to Die). Many have been wildly popular, but The Giver has been Lowry's greatest success. It's sold more than 12 million copies and has been adapted into a play, a musical and an opera. That's not to say that writing the movie version was easy. "It was extremely intimidating," admits Michael Mitnick, who's co-credited for the script. "I think I did about 87 drafts of the screenplay." Mitnick read The Giver as a fifth-grader. Now he's 30, but it's still one of his favorites, he says, for its spare but haunting language — and the questions it raises for young readers. "Would I prefer a world where there isn't war and there isn't starvation and greed and envy?" he asks. "Or would I instead believe that with the good there comes the bad — and there always has to be both sides of it?" The Giver includes controversial topics such as euthanasia, and that made Walden Media, which bought the rights to the book early on, at first hesitant to make the movie. "Because it had been banned in some places," explains executive Chip Flaherty. But then came The Hunger Games. Suddenly, a dystopian fantasy with a built-in following of millions of readers seemed like a worthy risk. Some critics credit The Giver with kicking off the entire dystopian YA trend, but Lowry immediately dismisses the notion. "I didn't think of it as futuristic or dystopian or science fiction or fantasy," she protests. Instead, she says, it was just a story like so many of her other ones, about a kid making sense of a complicated world. As the child of an Army officer, Lowry moved all over the globe — often after the school year had started. "So I would be thrust into classrooms as the new kid," she explains. That made her hypervigilant about recognizing subtle differences between the rules of each new place. For instance, in one school, the girls might wear their socks artfully scrunched down. "And then you'd be in the next place and the socks were carefully folded over," she laughs. "And it was important to know that.

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