Over the past few weeks, I read the book The Giver, by Lois Lowry. This book is about a dystopian world that was completely altered after a war that destroyed almost everything. This book was narrated by Jonas, a teenage boy who is about to be given a profession. In this book, a profession is what a person is intended to do after they reach a certain age.
Towards the beginning of the book, we experience Jonah going through the “Ceremony of the Twelve”, where the twelve-year-old boys get their professions. But after everyone else had gotten theirs, Jonah had not heard his name. There was one remaining profession that was not said: The Reciever. The receiver is the person that gets all of the memories from the time before the war; before everyone was exactly the same. However, this was not at all an easy job to fulfill. To be a receiver, you need to be prepared to see pictures of war that they had never experienced before, because of the extremely sheltered lifestyle they lived in.
This book tells the reader of Jonah’s journey of being a receiver, and learning everything from a wise old man that he calls “The Giver”. He tells Jonah everything he needs to know and gives Jonah his memories. Some memories are simple and happy, like going for a sled ride in the snow, but some of them are dark and unforgiving, such as images of the past wars.
But suddenly, the plot thickens. A baby is born in their community, and Jonah is helping his father take care of him. The baby would never be in peace, and Jonah helped him by giving some of his happy memories to the child in order to soothe him. But suddenly, Jonah is told by his father that Gabriel, the baby, is going to be released the next day. In this story, “being released” means to be killed as a baby painlessly. But because of the bond that Jonah had created with the baby, he could not just let the baby go that he had cared for over this time. So what will Jonah do next? You will have to find out.
I would recommend this book to anyone that likes dystopian fiction because it depicts Jonah in a “perfect world” that he somehow has to break out of to be free.