The Giver

by Lois Lowry

Scholastic BookFiles

A READING GUIDE TO

™

Jeannette Sanderson

Copyright © 2003 by Scholastic Inc.

Interview © 2003 by Lois Lowry

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.

SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC REFERENCE, SCHOLASTIC BOOKFILES, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scholastic BookFiles: A Reading Guide to The Giver by Lois Lowry/Jeannette Sanderson. p. cm.

Summary: Discusses the writing, characters, plot, and themes of this 1994 Newbery Award–winning book.

Includes discussion questions and activities.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

1. Lowry, Lois. Giver—Juvenile literature.

2. Science fiction, American—History and criticism—Juvenile literature. [1. Lowry, Lois. Giver.

2. American literature—History and criticism.]

I. Title: A Reading Guide to The Giver by Lois Lowry.

II. Title.

PS3562.O923 G5837

2003 813′.54—dc21

2002191233

0-439-46356-4

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

03 04 05 06 07

Composition by Brad Walrod/High Text Graphics, Inc.

Cover and interior design by Red Herring Design

Printed in the U.S.A. 23 First printing, July 2003

About Lois Lowry 5

How The Giver Came About 9

An Interview with Lois Lowry 12

Chapter Charter: Questions to Guide Your Reading 18

Plot: What’s Happening? 23

Setting/Time and Place: Where in the World Are We? 30

Themes/Layers of Meaning: Is That What It

Really Means? 33

Characters: Who Are These People, Anyway? 41

Opinion: What Have Other People Thought About

The Giver? 47

Glossary 50

Lois Lowry on Writing 52

You Be the Author! 55

Activities 57

Related Reading 61

Bibliography 63

3

Contents

About Lois Lowry

“From the time I was eight or nine, I wanted to be a writer. Writing was what I liked best in school; it was what I did best in school.”

—Lois Lowry

L

ois Lowry says that, aside from photography, she has never

wanted to do anything but write. The author of more than

twenty-five books for children and young adults, Lowry developed

a love of language, and a love of stories, early on. “I was a solitary

child,” she remembers, “born the middle of three, who lived in

the world of books and my own imagination. There are some

children, and I was this kind of child, who are introverts and

love to read—who prefer to curl up with a book than to hang out

with friends or play at the ball field. Children like that begin to

develop a feeling for language and for story. And that was true

for me—that’s how I became a writer.”

Lois Lowry was born on March 20, 1937, to Katharine and

Robert Hammersberg. Her sister, Helen, was three when Lois was

born; her brother, Jon, was born six years after Lois.

5

Lowry’s father was an army dentist, and his military career led

the family all over the world. Lois was born in Honolulu, Hawaii,

where she lived until she was three. Then the family moved to

New York City for two years. When Robert Hammersberg was

sent overseas during World War II, Lois, her mother, and her

sister went to stay with her mother’s parents at their home in

Carlisle, Pennsylvania. That’s where her brother was born. Seven

years later, the family went to join her father in Tokyo, Japan,

where he was stationed. They lived there for three years before

returning to the United States and New York City, where Lowry

went to high school.

After high school, Lowry went to Brown University in Providence,

Rhode Island, but left after her sophomore year to get married.

Since her husband was a naval officer, Lowry continued making

the frequent moves required of military families. Over the next

six years, she lived in California, Connecticut, Florida, South

Carolina, and Massachusetts. In the early 1960s, with four

children under the age of five, Lowry and her husband moved to

Maine to raise their family.

“My children grew up in Maine,” Lowry says. “So did I. I . . . finally

began to write professionally, the thing I had dreamed of doing

since those childhood years when I had endlessly scribbled

stories and poems in notebooks.”

Lowry went back to college in Maine. She got her degree from the

University of Southern Maine in 1973, and went to graduate

school. In 1976, she discovered her chosen career: writing for

children. “Since childhood, I always wanted to be a writer,” Lowry

6

says. “I majored in writing in college, but I thought of myself as a

writer for adults. It wasn’t until I wrote my first book for kids in

1976 that I realized it was something that I loved doing. Now I

hardly ever write for adults.”

Lowry has written about many topics, some autobiographical,

others not. Her first book, A Summer to Die, is about the death of

an older sibling. She wrote the novel from personal experience:

She lost her own sister to cancer in 1962. But whether or not the

topics are based on her own experience, the feelings are. “Every

time I write a book, I feel all the same feelings I felt when I was

nine,” Lowry has said.

While she may express the feelings of a nine-year-old in her

writing, Lowry expresses the concerns of a grown woman. “I have

grandchildren now,” she says. “For them, I feel a greater urgency

to do what I can to convey the knowledge that we live intertwined

on this planet and that our future as human beings depends

upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another.”

Books, Lowry says, are one way to understand this

interconnectedness. “The man that I named The Giver passed

along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain,

laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the

hands of a child, you do the same thing. . . . Each time a child

opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from

Elsewhere. It gives him choices, it gives him freedom.”

Lowry sits at her desk every day, typing and retyping, putting

together stories that open the gate to Elsewhere. “I have a

7

relationship with—and an obligation to—the reader,” she says,

“because I affect that person’s life and thinking, and that is no

small responsibility.”

In addition to doing the writing that she loves, Lowry finds time

for a number of other activities. She is an avid reader. “Sitting

around eating fresh apricots and reading a good book is my idea

of heaven,” Lowry says, adding that this was one of her favorite

activities when she was ten, too. She also loves gardening—she

has two houses with flower gardens—and cooking. She knits for

her children and grandchildren, and likes to play bridge and go

to the movies. And, she is an accomplished photographer; her

work graces the covers of her books The Giver, Number the Stars,

and Gathering Blue.

Lowry now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and spends her

weekends at a farmhouse in New Hampshire with a Tibetan

terrier named Bandit.

8

How The Giver Came About

“We can forget pain....And it is comfortable to do so. But I also wonder...is it safe to do that, to forget?”

—Lois Lowry

L

ois Lowry describes the origins of The Giver as a river that

began back when she was eleven years old. At the time, her

family lived in Tokyo, Japan, where her father was stationed after

World War II. They lived in a small American community there.

The way Lowry describes it, the fenced-off community shared

some traits with the community in which Jonas lives: It was

comfortable, familiar, and safe.

But, like Jonas after he begins receiving memories, Lowry did not

want comfortable, familiar, and safe. Day after day, she rode her

bicycle out of the gate that closed off her community. She would

ride to an area of Tokyo called Shibuya. Lowry says she loved the

feel of the place, “the vigor and the garish brightness and the

noise: all such a contrast to my own life.” For Lowry, Shibuya

was Elsewhere. The river started there. As she grew, Lowry added

more memories, thoughts, and ideas to this river.

9

She added memories from when she was a freshman in college

and lived in a small dorm of fourteen young women. Thirteen

of the women—Lowry included—were very much alike. They

dressed alike, they acted alike. But the fourteenth woman was

different. Lowry remembers that she and her roommates didn’t

“tease or torment” the woman who was different, but did

“something worse”: They ignored her, pretending that she didn’t

exist. “Somehow by shutting her out, we make ourselves feel

comfortable. Familiar. Safe,” Lowry says.

These memories, as well as the remorseful thoughts that

followed, flowed into the river.

The river rose when Lowry was sent by a magazine editor to

interview a painter who lived alone off the coast of Maine. She

and the man talked a lot about color. “It is clear to me that

although I am a highly visual person—a person who sees and

appreciates form and composition and color—this man’s capacity

for seeing color goes far beyond mine,” Lowry says. She adds that

she wished “that he could have somehow magically given me the

capacity to see the way he did.”

Lowry photographed the man and kept a copy of the photograph,

because there was something about his eyes that haunted her.

(This photograph is now on the cover of The Giver.) The artist

later went blind, though he said he could still see flowers in his

memory. “Doesn’t that make you think of The Giver?” Lowry

asks.

10

Over the years, many more memories, thoughts, and ideas were

added to the river. There was the time she heard of a crazed killer

and felt relieved that he was not in her own neighborhood—then,

moments later, felt ashamed to feel such relief. “How safe I

deluded myself into feeling,” she says, “by reducing my own

realm of caring to my own familiar neighborhood.”

Lowry’s experiences with her elderly parents also added to the

river that would become The Giver. “Both of my parents were

dying when I wrote the book,” Lowry says. “So the topic of

memories and the transfer of memories from one generation to

the next was very much on my mind.”

Lowry says that though her mother was quite ill, “her mind was

intact. She wanted to tell me the stories of her past . . . it was her

life she wanted to pass along.”

But her father was losing his memories. During one visit, he

pointed to a picture of Lois’s older sister, Helen, who had died of

cancer when she was just twenty-eight years old. “That’s Helen,”

he’d said. “I can’t remember exactly what happened to her.”

And Lowry thought, We can forget pain. . . . And it is comfortable to

do so. But . . . is it safe to do that, to forget?

It was from this river of memories, thoughts, and ideas that Lois

Lowry wrote The Giver.

11

An Interview with Lois Lowry

About The Giver

Jonas is always careful about language, trying to choose just the

right words. Is he like you in that regard? How important do you

think it is to choose just the right words?

Yes, Jonas is like me in valuing the precision of words. . . . (It’s

part of my job after all, to choose just the right words as I make

my way through the writing of a book.) Though because of the

world in which he lives, he has no feeling for the beauty of

language, or the subtlety it can have.

What do you think is the most appealing aspect about the

community in which Jonas lives? What is the least appealing?

I like the safety and comfort of it: the absence of crime, poverty,

deprivation, prejudice. But the lack of creativity and imagination

is the most troubling aspect to me.

The Giver is one of the American Library Association’s most

frequently challenged books. What do you say to people who want

to remove from library shelves a book that shows just how harmful

lack of choice can be?

12

I sometimes explain to kids, in particular, that people who

challenge books do so because they care about children and their

welfare. The irony, though, if you think it through, is that they

make the world a more dangerous place by taking away freedom.

The people who inhabited the world of The Giver had made their

world very safe, very comfortable. But they had done it by taking

away freedom. And there were no books left.

If a reader took away only one thing from this book, what would

you want it to be?

The thing I hope readers will learn from The Giver is the

importance of having choice, and the importance of making good

choices.

About being a writer

When do you write? Will you describe a typical day for us?

I work at home, in a room that was once a doctor’s office (this

house once belonged to a doctor, and his office was attached to

the house. I took away all his cabinets and created a wall of

bookcases in their place). I go into my office every morning and I

stay here all day, unless, of course, I’m traveling.

I sit here [Lowry answered these interview questions from her

office.] at a MacIntosh computer and put words on a page. I am

not always writing fiction—though there is always a book-in-

progress in the computer. I have to spend a lot of time answering

13

mail, doing interviews, writing speeches, etc. But the time with

fiction is the time I love most. I write sentences, rewrite them, say

them aloud, listen to their cadence, and write them again. I find

ways to make them flow into the next sentences and

paragraphs . . . to make the narrative move along smoothly; to

make the characters seem real. Writing is a solitary occupation,

of course, but, for me, never lonely. My head is so populated with

my fictional people, and they become quite real to me.

How do you know when you’re ready to begin writing a new book?

I think about a book for a long time before I begin writing. It’s

only when the character comes alive in my imagination . . . when

I know where in his story I will encounter him or her, in other

words, where the book will begin. By then I know everything that

has gone before. But I don’t want to start too far back. The best

stories begin in the middle of something. In The Giver, for

example . . . I knew, before I began, what Jonas had been doing

for eleven years. But I realized I needed to start on one particular

day when he was almost twelve.

How important is reading to your writing?

Reading is absolutely essential. You don’t enjoy cooking if you’ve

never eaten good food. And why would you write if you didn’t

read, and love reading? For a writer, reading is a constant

education, as well. You learn from poor writers and you are

inspired by great ones.

14

You’ve said that you don’t read children’s books by other authors.

Why not?

I find that the fiction I most enjoy is fiction in which I can relate

to the main character. . . identify with him or her. That means

that I most enjoy fiction about people my age, people who face

problems that I have faced, or that I can imagine facing. Of

course, having been a child . . . and because I have a good

memory of my childhood . . . I can enjoy books for kids. But I

have limited time for reading. So I spend it on adult books.

What’s your favorite thing about being a writer? What’s your least

favorite?

I like the solitude of it. I don’t think I’d enjoy a job that required

constant interaction with other people. Least favorite? The

business end of it: contracts, copyrights, etc. Boooorring. But

necessary, of course.

What do you find easiest when writing? What do you find

hardest?

Hmmmm. Have to think about that one. Easiest, I guess, is

starting and ending. I always find the beginnings of manuscripts

an exhilarating time. And I like (even though readers are always

bugging me about the ending of The Giver) the conclusions of

books: figuring out where, exactly, to end, so that everything

important in the book is part of the ending. . . . But at the same

time, I don’t want the ending to be too neatly tied up, because I

want to leave the reader with things to think and wonder about.

15

And that leaves, as the hardest part, the middle. There is so

much to weave in and through the middle. The mechanics of it

are difficult at times.

You are a photographer as well as a writer. How does your

photography inform your writing in general, and how did it inform

your writing of The Giver, in particular? (Aside from the beautiful

cover art.)

As a photographer it is always a question of choosing film,

lenses, focus, depth of field, etc. And the composition as well. The

same things apply to writing: where to place things, how to focus

in on the important things, what to blur. In addition, as a

writer. . . I tend to SEE what I’m writing; I go about it very

visually.

What advice do you have for children who would like to be

writers? What do you suggest they write about?

Read a lot, of course. And think about what you read. That’s how

you learn what makes stories work. Write for yourself, and to

practice how to put things together on a page. Don’t think for

one second, ever, about “how can I get this published.” Think,

instead, about the beauty of the language: how it feels and flows,

how you can make it say just what you want it to.

What should they write about? The things that trouble them. The

things they fear. The things that bring them the most joy.

16

General

You’ve said you were painfully shy as a child. Are you still shy?

How has your shyness influenced the stories you write?

Yes, I am [shy], but I have learned to conceal that fairly well and

to make my way through the necessary public events that are

part of my life now. I think being an introvert has made me

introspective. I think a lot, instead of talking a lot. Thinking is a

very important part of being a writer. And so is observation. I am

a watcher of people. It serves me well as a writer.

If you weren’t a writer, what might you be?

Well, I would enjoy being a filmmaker, I think. Or a designer of

houses. Not an architect—I’m not interested in the engineering

and structural stuff. But I love renovating old houses. Right now

I’m in the middle of fixing up a house built in 1768. There are

paint samples spread out all over my desk.

What’s one thing, besides writing, that you’re really good at?

What’s one thing that you’re really bad at?

I’m a pretty good cook, and I like entertaining friends . . . that goes

along with my love of fixing up houses. I’m a very low-level

Martha Stewart type, I think.

And I am SOOOOOO bad at anything athletic. Bad skier. Terrible

tennis player. I’m a good swimmer, though, so I’m not completely

hopeless.

17

Chapter Charter: Questions to Guide Your Reading

T

he following questions will help you think about the

important parts of each chapter.

Chapter 1

• What do you imagine it means when someone is “released”?

• What are some clues that Jonas’s community is different from

the one in which you live?

Chapter 2

• How would you feel not to have your own individual birthday?

• If you were attending the Ceremony of Twelve with Jonas, what

Assignment do you think the Elders would select for you?

Chapter 3

• How would you feel to be watched all the time, the way Jonas is?

• Do you think it says something about Jonas that he sees the

apple change?

Chapter 4

• Jonas’s community has a lot of rules. Do you think that’s a

good thing or a bad thing? Why?

Chapter 5

• Why was Jonas embarrassed about telling his dream?

18

• How important is sameness in Jonas’s community? How

important is it in your community?

Chapter 6

• All the members of Jonas’s family had to sign a pledge that

they would not become attached to the newchild, Gabe. Do you

think it’s possible to keep such a promise?

• What do you think of how families in Jonas’s community are

formed?

Chapter 7

• Do you think Asher should have been given the discipline

wand when he was three, for saying “smack” instead of

“snack”?

• How would you feel if you were in Jonas’s shoes and the

Chief Elder skipped right over you when she was making

Assignments?

Chapter 8

• What do you think Jonas’s Capacity to See Beyond is?

• Would you rather be selected, as Jonas was, or assigned, as

his groupmates were?

Chapter 9

• Jonas tells himself several times that things can’t change

between him and his best friend, Asher. Do you think they

can? Do you think they will?

• Why does Jonas find the final rule in his instructions, “You

may lie,” so unsettling?

19

Chapter 10

• What do you think it means to live in a place where no doors

are ever locked?

• Jonas says, “I thought there was only us. I thought there was

only now.” Do you think that’s a good way to live?

Chapter 11

• Can you imagine giving up such things as snow and hills

because they are impractical?

Chapter 12

• Imagine a world without color. What color would you miss

most?

• What value, if any, is there to Sameness?

Chapter 13

• Do you agree with Jonas that people have to be protected from

wrong choices?

• As Jonas continues his training, he often finds himself angry

with his groupmates and his family. Why?

• The Giver says that without memories, knowledge is

meaningless. What does he mean?

Chapter 14

• Do you agree that painful memories are made easier when they

are shared?

• Do you think it’s fair that one person in the community—The

Receiver—should have to be burdened and pained by memories

so that no one else is?

20

Chapter 15

• Why do you think The Giver asks Jonas to forgive him?

Chapter 16

• The Giver gives Jonas many good memories. What are some of

your best memories?

• Do you think the elderly should be part of the community, or

separate, as in Jonas’s community?

• Do you think Jonas’s parents love him? Do you think they

know what love is?

• Do you agree with Jonas that things could be different? How?

Chapter 17

• Why didn’t the game of good guys and bad guys that Jonas’s

friends play seem harmless to Jonas anymore? Should Jonas

have asked them to stop playing it? Why or why not?

Chapter 18

• Do you think Rosemary sounds like she was or wasn’t brave?

• Why did The Giver seem distracted after telling Jonas to stay

away from the river?

Chapter 19

• What do you think of what Jonas’s community calls “release”?

Were you surprised at what it was?

• How do you think this new knowledge will affect Jonas?

21

Chapter 20

• Jonas knows that if his plan fails, he could be killed. But he

believes that if he stays, his life is no longer worth living. Do

you agree?

• Do you think The Giver should go with Jonas or stay? Why?

Chapter 21

• How does Jonas show that he understands that the meaning of

everything is to care about others?

• How do you think The Giver will feel when he realizes Jonas is

gone? How will Jonas’s friends and family feel?

• Why is the community so desperate to get Jonas back?

Chapter 22

• Jonas briefly wonders whether he made the wrong choice when

he decided to run away. What do you think?

Chapter 23

• Although most of the memories have left Jonas, the feelings

have not. Why do you think that is?

• How do you think the story ends?

22

Plot: What’s Happening?

“‘Jonas,’ she said, speaking not to him alone but to the entire community of which he was a part, ‘you will be trained to be our next Receiver of Memory. We thank you for your childhood.’”

—Chief Elder, The Giver

T

he Giver is the story of a boy who lives in a seemingly

perfect futuristic world and what he does when he learns

the great price his community pays for such perfection.

The story starts with eleven-year-old Jonas worrying about the

upcoming Ceremony of Twelve. This ceremony is when the

Elevens are given their Assignments.

One evening before the Ceremony, Jonas’s father, a Nurturer,

brings home a newchild who needs extra nurturing. Jonas’s

father hopes to help the baby, named Gabe, grow and learn to

sleep, so that the Committee will not vote to release him.

The Ceremony holiday finally arrives. The first day begins with

the Naming of the newchildren. Gabe is not at the ceremony;

23

Jonas’s father received permission from the Committee to allow

the newchild an additional year to reach the proper milestones.

The Ceremony of Twelve begins the next day after lunch. The

Chief Elder makes the Assignments, but skips Jonas when it is

his turn. After she makes the final Assignment, the Chief Elder

apologizes to Jonas. Then she says that he has been “selected to

be our next Receiver of Memory.” She says that the Committee

failed in their last selection ten years ago, and has been very

careful with this one. She explains that the job, the most honored

in the community, requires that The Receiver be alone and apart,

and that Jonas will need a tremendous amount of courage

because he will be faced “with pain of a magnitude that none of

us here can comprehend because it is beyond our experience.”

Jonas wonders if he has this courage.

The Chief Elder says that The Receiver must also have the

Capacity to See Beyond. Jonas looks out at the crowd, and

something happens to their faces—they change, the way an apple

he had tossed with his friend had changed. He thinks that maybe

he does have this quality.

That night, Jonas reads the rules and instructions for his

Assignment. The last rule—you may lie—frightens him. “What if

others—adults—had, upon becoming Twelves, received in their

instructions the same terrifying sentence?” Did others lie?

Jonas begins his training the next day. The Receiver tells Jonas,

“My job is to transmit to you all of the memories I have within

me. Memories of the past. . . . Memories of the whole world.”

24

Jonas is confused. “I thought there was only us. I thought there

was only now.” “There’s much more,” The Receiver tells him.

“There’s all that goes beyond—all that is Elsewhere—and all that

goes back, and back, and back.”

The current Receiver becomes The Giver and gives Jonas his first

memory: that of a sled ride down a hill. When Jonas asks why

snow, sleds, and hills no longer exist, The Giver explains that

they became obsolete when the community decided to go to

Sameness.

The next day, Jonas notices his friend Fiona’s hair change, the

way the apple and the faces in the crowd at the Ceremony had

changed. Jonas asks The Giver about it. The Giver explains that

Jonas is starting to see the color red. Jonas learns that there

once were a lot of colors but that the community made the choice

to do away with them to go to Sameness.

As he continues his training, Jonas feels frustrated to realize how

few choices he has. He knows that it’s safer this way, but it

bothers him nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the newchild still isn’t sleeping well, so Jonas tries

taking him into his room at night. The first time Gabe fusses,

Jonas rubs the baby’s back. As he does so, he remembers a

wonderful sail The Giver gave to him. The memory begins to fade,

and Jonas realizes he is giving the memory to the baby. It helps

Gabe sleep. Jonas does not tell The Giver that he has given away

a memory.

25

The Giver gives Jonas many happy memories, but increasingly

painful memories, too. Jonas begins to look at his family and

groupmates differently. They have never seen color. They have

never known pain. These thoughts make him feel very lonely. He

asks The Giver why everyone can’t have memories. “I think it

would seem a little easier if the memories were shared,” he says.

The Giver agrees. “But,” he says, “then everyone would be

burdened and pained. They don’t want that. And that’s the real

reason The Receiver is so vital to them, and so honored. They

selected me—and you—to lift that burden from themselves.”

The Giver tells him that when The Receiver-in-training failed ten

years ago, after only five weeks, the memories she had received

were released, and everyone had access to them. “It was chaos,”

he says.

Jonas wonders aloud what would happen to the community if

anything happened to him. He has been receiving memories for

nearly a year. “If they lost you, with all the training you’ve had

now, they’d have all those memories again themselves,” The Giver

says. “They wouldn’t know how to deal with it at all.”

“The only way I deal with it is by having you there to help me,”

Jonas says.

That gives The Giver an idea. “I suppose I could help the whole

community the way I’ve helped you,” he says. “It’s an interesting

concept. I need to think about it some more.”

26

Jonas then tells The Giver that his father was going to release a

newborn twin that morning. Jonas’s concept of release is that the

person is sent to Elsewhere. The Giver tells Jonas that he thinks

he should watch the video of that release.

Jonas watches on the video screen as his father inserts a needle

into a baby’s forehead. He listens to his father’s cheerful voice

say, “All done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He watches the baby

die. His mind reels. “He killed it! My father killed it!”

Jonas refuses to go home that night. The Giver says he can

spend the night with him. When Jonas rails against his father’s

actions, against all the people who perform releases, The Giver

tells him, “They can’t help it. They know nothing.” He explains

that feelings are not part of the life they’ve learned, that he and

Jonas are the only ones in the community who have feelings.

That evening, The Giver tells Jonas that “having you here with

me over the past year has made me realize that things must

change. . . . Now for the first time I think there might be a way.”

And they make a plan for The Giver to help Jonas to escape, so

that the people will live with memories again.

Jonas wants The Giver to go with him, but his friend refuses.

He says he must stay to help the community deal with the

memories. “If you get away,” The Giver tells Jonas, “if you get

beyond, if you get to Elsewhere, it will mean that the community

has to bear the burden themselves, of the memories you had

been holding for them. I think they can, and that they will

acquire some wisdom. But it will be desperately hard for them.”

27

“Giver,” Jonas says. “You and I don’t need to care about the rest

of them.” But as soon as he says that, he is ashamed, because

“of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”

Jonas is sure the plan will work. But when he goes home, he

learns that the Committee has decided to release Gabe the next

morning. Jonas knows then that he has to flee right away,

without The Giver’s help.

In the middle of the night Jonas straps Gabe into the child seat

on the back of his father’s bicycle. Then he pedals away from the

community, toward Elsewhere. Jonas’s only regret is that he

does not get to say good-bye to The Giver.

Jonas rides hard through the night, knowing that daylight will

bring knowledge of his and Gabe’s disappearance. At dawn he

stops in an isolated field where he and Gabe eat and then sleep.

They go on like this for days, bicycling through the night,

sleeping during the day. Jonas’s greatest fear is the search

planes. Whenever he hears them, he holds Gabe and hides.

One day the planes stop looking for them. The landscape

changes, too. It is no longer flat and smooth. Now it is bumpy.

Jonas feels “simple moments of exquisite happiness” when he

sees wildflowers, birds, the wind shifting in the trees. But he is

also very afraid now, afraid that he and Gabe will starve. He

wonders briefly if, finally given a choice to make, he made the

wrong one. Then, when he thinks of Gabe, he knows he had no

choice. He had to flee.

28

29

Jonas and Gabe continue their journey, hungry and increasingly

cold. Jonas feels certain that he is reaching his destination. They

come to a place where it snows. He can no longer ride his bike.

And it is so hard to walk. Jonas thinks of just lying down with

the baby in the soft cold, of giving up. But he won’t. He tries to

call back some of the memories of warmth that The Giver had

given to him, but they are weak. Those memories are almost all

lost to him now, returned to the community.

Then, as he trudges up a snow-covered hill carrying the baby

inside his tunic, he feels he knows what is waiting for him at the

top. “We’re almost there, Gabriel,” he tells the baby. Somehow

Jonas knows that a sled will be waiting at the top of the hill, and

it is. Jonas climbs on and, holding tight to Gabriel, sets off down

the hill. He sees lights in the distance. And, for the first time, he

hears people singing.

Thinking about the plot

• In what ways did Jonas’s world seem perfect?

• What were some of the things missing from Jonas’s world?

• What are some of the reasons that Jonas felt he had to run

away?

Setting/Time and Place: Where in the World Are We?

“‘I don’t know what you mean when you say “the whole world” or “generations before him.” I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.’”

—Jonas, The Giver

T

he Giver is a science-fiction novel that takes place in a

“very different culture and time,” Lowry says. The author

establishes the book’s unusual setting in a number of ways.

One way Lowry establishes the book’s setting is by making

Jonas’s world one full of rules, some familiar, others totally

strange. There are rules about keeping feelings hidden, about

having more than two children—one male, one female—in each

family unit, and about bragging, among other things. There are

so many rules, in fact, that each household has the community’s

Book of Rules as one of the three books that it is allowed to—and

required to—own.

Lowry also places readers in unfamiliar territory with the words

she uses to describe things that are familiar to us. For instance,

a family becomes a family unit, a home becomes a dwelling, and

a stuffed animal becomes a comfort object.

30

In addition to making the familiar unfamiliar with her use of

words, Lowry uses capitalization to remove the reader from any

familiar time and place. The author capitalizes the names of

important events and ceremonies, such as the Naming, when

newchildren are given their names and the Ceremony of Twelve,

when children are given their lifetime work Assignments. Lowry

also capitalizes words that identify people’s positions in the

community. For instance, Jonas’s dad is a Nurturer, Jonas is a

Twelve, the man who trains him is The Receiver, then The Giver.

Another way Lowry establishes her unfamiliar setting is by giving

the reader a community in which people’s lives are mapped out

for them from birth to death. A baby is raised in the Nurturing

Center. At the December ceremony it is Named and delivered to

his or her new family unit. Each successive December that child

moves up to the next age group and assumes that group’s rights

and responsibilities. At the Ceremony of Twelve the child will be

assigned his or her lifelong job in the community. Eventually, an

adult may apply to receive a spouse. Then the Committee of

Elders monitors the couple for three years before allowing the

spouses to apply for children. Once their children are grown, the

spouses move into a group home, where they live with other

Childless Adults. Eventually, when they are old enough, they go

to live at the House of the Old, where they live out their final

days, until they are released from the community.

Lowry also establishes the uniqueness—and eeriness—of her

setting by showing that there is no privacy. There is always

someone watching you, and someone listening to you. The reader

sees that Jonas is being watched when the boy recalls an

31

32

incident when he took an apple home from the recreation area

and, later, hears this public announcement: “ATTENTION. THIS IS

A REMINDER TO MALE ELEVENS THAT OBJECTS ARE NOT TO BE REMOVED

FROM THE RECREATION AREA AND THAT SNACKS ARE TO BE EATEN, NOT

HOARDED.” The speakers in each home are not just for public

announcements, they are for private listening. So when family

members are required to share feelings and dreams with one

another, they are also sharing them with whomever is listening in

at the other end of that speaker. The only person who can turn

off this speaker and listening device is The Receiver, or The Giver,

as Jonas comes to call him.

Jonas’s world is also a place that Lowry makes different by

making it all the same. The Giver tells Jonas that before the

community chose to go to Sameness there were hills, there was

snow, there were colors. Many of the differences we take for

granted in our world are missing from Jonas’s.

Lowry uses all of the above and more to turn a world that is

familiar—a world where children go to school, play catch, ride

bikes, get annoyed at little sisters, snuggle stuffed animals, and

coo at babies—into a world that is terribly strange.

Thinking about the setting

• Does The Giver take place anywhere that’s familiar to you?

• When does The Giver take place?

• What first told you that The Giver takes place in a very different

culture and time?

Themes/Layers of Meaning: Is That What It Really Means?

“‘Giver,’ Jonas suggested, ‘you and I don’t need to care about the rest of them.’

“The Giver looked at him with a questioning smile. Jonas hung his head.

Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”

—The Giver

Connections

The importance of making connections is one of the major

themes in The Giver. Lowry says that the book speaks to “the vital

need for humans to be aware of their interdependence, not only

with each other, but with the world and its environment.”

When Jonas begins his training, The Giver says that he must

transmit “the memories of the whole world” to Jonas. Because

The Giver has all these memories, his life is much richer than the

lives of other members of the community. He can see color, he

can hear music, he can feel love. But he can also feel pain, and

that is a great burden to him. When Jonas sees The Giver

33

suffering, he wants to help him. “What is it that makes you suffer

so much?” he asks. “If you gave some of it to me, maybe your

pain would be less.”

The Giver does give Jonas pain, and Jonas suffers from these

memories, but not as much as if he had to bear them alone. He is

glad that he can share them with The Giver, though he wishes

the memories could be shared by the whole community. The

Giver agrees. “The worst part of holding the memories is not the

pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”

The Giver and Jonas work out a plan to return the memories to

the community. It means Jonas must leave and never come back.

Although Jonas is sad to leave The Giver, and initially wants his

friend to leave with him, he knows that The Giver must stay. He

needs to help the others. As Jonas realizes, “Of course they

needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”

Lowry feels her connectedness to others even when she’s alone at

her desk writing. “When I’m working in isolation, I feel I have a

great bond with a world of people, of children, and adults who

care about things, who feel the same way about things. That’s

what Jonas didn’t have.”

Choice

Choice—which Jonas had very little of—is another important

theme in this book. Lowry says, “The Giver relates to me in

probably the same way it relates to everybody—it is a reminder of

34

the importance of the choices we make; also of the value of our

freedom to make choices.”

Jonas is made aware of the importance of choices we make when

he looks back at the choices the community has made. He sees

all that has been lost since the community decided to go to

Sameness: snow, hills, sleds, color, and choice.

He truly regrets the loss of choice. “If everything’s the same,” he

says, “then there aren’t any choices! I want to wake up in the

morning and decide things! A blue tunic, or a red one?”

Then The Giver points out that along with the freedom of choice

comes the possibility of making the wrong choices. Jonas

understands the community’s reasoning behind taking away

choice. He almost believes it. “We really have to protect people

from wrong choices,” he says. It’s “much safer.” But even as he

speaks these words, he feels uneasy with them.

Freedom versus security

Loss of choice is loss of freedom, and another important theme in

The Giver is freedom versus security. Lowry describes the perfect

world she created in the book: “I tried to make Jonas’s world

seem familiar, comfortable, and safe, and I tried to seduce the

reader. I seduced myself along the way. It did feel good, that

world. I got rid of all the things I fear and dislike: all the violence,

prejudice, poverty, and injustice; and I even threw in good

manners as a way of life because I liked the idea of it. . . . It was

very, very tempting to leave it at that. But I’ve never been a writer

35

of fairy tales. And if I’ve learned anything . . . it is that we can’t

live in a walled world, in an ‘only us, only now’ world, where we

are all the same and feel safe. We would have to sacrifice too

much.”

Jonas, in choosing to run away, comes to the same conclusion.

He knows that if he gets caught, “he would very likely be killed.

But,” he thinks, “what did that matter? If he stayed, his life was

no longer worth living.”

Even when he and Gabe are cold and starving, and Jonas

wonders if he made the right choice to run away, he can’t help

believing that he did. He knows that if he had stayed in the

community, he would not be starving. But, “if he had stayed, he

would have starved in other ways. He would have lived a life

hungry for feelings, for color, for love.”

Jonas was unwilling to give up all that. He was also unwilling to

sacrifice his humanity—his ability to care for others—for the

safety and security his community provided. He could not live in

a place that would kill a baby because he did not sleep through

the night.

Sameness versus diversity

One area where Jonas’s community finds security is in

Sameness, which leads to the theme of sameness versus

diversity. On this subject, Lowry says, “I think that people are

always more comfortable with familiar things. It is not easy to

stand out, and that’s why teenagers like to wear the same

36

sneakers as other teenagers. The world of The Giver is a world

where nobody has to take any risks. It’s a very safe and

comfortable world.”

So much is the same in Jonas’s world: He and his groupmates

wear the same kind of clothes, they ride the same kind of

bicycles, they have the same kind of family units. The streets are

flat, the weather is unvarying, there is no color. Until he spends

time with The Giver, Jonas is unaware of this Sameness. Once he

learns of it, though, he is unhappy with it. He wants colors, he

wants snow and hills and sleds. When The Giver explains that

they had to let go of some things to gain control of others, Jonas

says, “We shouldn’t have!”

When Jonas runs away from his community, from Sameness, he

finds a world of unexpected pleasures: “After a life of Sameness

and predictability, he was awed by the surprises that lay beyond

each curve of the road.”

Individuality

In a community that values Sameness, there is no room for

individuality, which is another theme in The Giver. In Jonas’s

community, being your own person is frowned upon. The Chief

Elder says at the Ceremony of Twelve, “You Elevens have spent

all your years till now learning to fit in, to standardize your

behavior, to curb any impulse that might set you apart from the

group.” It is only in their Assignments that their differences are

acknowledged and honored.

37

Children do not celebrate individual birthdays, they do not even

know their actual birthdays; instead, they turn the next age with

their groupmates at the December Ceremonies. When The Giver

gives Jonas the memory of a birthday party, “with one child

singled out and celebrated on his day,” Jonas comes to

understand “the joy of being an individual, special and unique

and proud.”

Honesty

Honesty is another theme in The Giver. When Jonas receives the

rules and instructions that he must follow in his training, he is

most disturbed by the final rule, “You may lie.” He has been

trained since he was a very young child never to lie. When he

hears this, he wonders whether others, upon becoming Twelves,

have been told, “You may lie.” Do adults lie to him? He knows,

given his rules and instructions, that he could ask adults—his

parents, even—if they lie. “But,” he thinks, “he would have no

way of knowing if the answer he received were true.”

He learns that his father has lied to him when he watches the

tape of his father euthanizing the newborn twin. When talking

about the “release” the night before, Jonas had asked his father

about the procedure, had specifically asked if somebody else

came to get the baby, somebody from Elsewhere, and his father

had said yes, “That’s right, Jonas-bonus.” When Jonas sees that

his father actually kills the baby, he is horrified. And he is angry.

38

“He lied to me,” Jonas cries. The Giver tries to console Jonas,

telling him that his father was just doing what he was told to do.

“He knows nothing,” he tells Jonas.

Jonas asks if The Giver lies to him, too. “I am empowered to lie,”

The Giver says. “But I have never lied to you.” The Giver has

made the choice to be honest.

Family

Another theme in this book is family. What makes a family? In

The Giver, families are called family units. They do not start with

a man and woman falling in love and deciding to start a family,

families start with a man or a woman applying for a spouse.

Then, once the committee matches them with one, the couple

must prove their compatability for three years before they are

allowed to apply for a child.

Children are not born in a family, they are born in a Birthing

Center by Birthmothers. They are raised in a Nurturing Center

until the December after their birth, at which time they are given

to parents the committee has chosen from among the applicants.

Each family unit is allowed one male and one female child.

When children are grown, the parents move out of the family

dwelling to live with other Childless Adults. They are no longer

part of their children’s lives. There is no intergenerational

connectedness. There are no grandparents.

39

40

Jonas does not miss grandparents, or know to miss them, until

The Giver gives him his favorite memory, which involves several

generations of people sitting around a Christmas tree opening

gifts. He tells The Giver, “I can see that it wasn’t a very practical

way to live, with the Old right there in the same place, where

maybe they wouldn’t be well taken care of, the way they are now,

and that we have a better-arranged way of doing things. But

anyway, I was thinking, I mean feeling, actually, that it was kind

of nice, then. And that I wish we could be that way, and that you

could be my grandparent.” Jonas sees—and wants—a family that

is bound not just by duty and obligation, but by love.

Thinking about the themes

• What do you think is the most important theme in The Giver?

• How much would you be willing to give up to live in a safe and

secure world? Would you give up as much as the people in

Jonas’s community?

• What are the good and bad things about Jonas’s family?

Characters: Who Are These People, Anyway?

T

here are about ten speaking characters in this book. The

two main characters are Jonas and The Giver. Other

important characters are Gabriel, Jonas’s father, and Jonas’s

best friend, Asher.

Here is a list of characters. Following that, there is a brief

description of each of the main characters.

Jonas a boy turning twelve

The Giver the person who holds the memories of the world

Gabriel a baby Jonas grows to love, called Gabe

Father Jonas’s father

Mother Jonas’s mother

Lily Jonas’s younger sister

Asher Jonas’s best friend

Fiona Jonas’s friend

Larissa a woman in the House of the Old

Chief Elder the leader of the community

Jonas: Jonas, the main character in the book, is an eleven-

year-old boy on the verge of becoming an adult in his

community. Jonas is an introspective boy who thinks a good deal

about what is happening around him. He is also curious,

considerate, observant, intelligent, and brave.

41

From the beginning, it is clear that Jonas spends a lot of time

thinking. He struggles to find just the right word to describe his

feelings regarding the upcoming Ceremony of Twelve. He wonders

about the apple that seemed to have changed while he was

playing catch with Asher. He thinks about dreams, replaying

them in his head. He tries to imagine how things might be

different for the whole community.

Jonas is also curious. He wants to experience everything, despite

the pain it might cause him. He wants to know about Elsewhere.

He asks his father and The Giver about release. He takes full

advantage of being able to ask The Giver questions.

That Jonas is very observant is especially obvious during and

after the Ceremony of Twelve. He notices the hush in the crowd

when the Chief Elder skips over him while making the

Assignments; he notices his groupmates trying not to make eye

contact; he notices the worried look on the face of his group

leader. And he notices how Asher and others seem to treat him

differently after he is given his Assignment.

Because he is so observant, Jonas can see when people are

uncomfortable or need help, and is considerate in offering it.

When he first meets The Giver, and the man says of his

memories, “I am so weighted with them,” Jonas feels “a terrible

concern for the man.” And when The Giver is miserable with

pain, Jonas asks him to share it. “If you gave some of it to me,

maybe your pain would be less,” he says. And, just as he is

willing to take away the man’s greatest pain, he is unwilling to

take away his greatest pleasure. When The Giver offers to give

42

Jonas some music before he leaves, Jonas refuses. “No, Giver,”

he says. “I want you to keep that, to have with you, when I’m

gone.”

Jonas shows his intelligence in a number of ways. He realizes

that if his instructions tell him he can lie, the adults around him

may lie to him, and that he will never know if they do because

they do not have to answer him truthfully. After learning of

colors, and how they were done away with when the community

went to Sameness, Jonas says, “We shouldn’t have!” He even

shows his intelligence when he and Gabe run away: He uses

memories of snow to cool them off so they will avoid detection by

the search planes’ heat-seeking devices, and memories of warmth

to keep from freezing to death.

Finally, Jonas is brave. He does not feel brave when the Chief

Elder describes him as such at the Ceremony of Twelve, but he

goes on to show that he is very brave indeed. He is brave when he

volunteers to take painful memories from The Giver to ease his

burden. And he is brave when he runs away with Gabe. He risks

capture, and with it almost certain death, but he knows that he

has no choice. He has to run away to find a real life for himself,

and he has to run away to let Gabe live his life.

The Giver: The Giver is another major character in this book.

He is the current Receiver of Memory, and he trains Jonas to be

his replacement. This man, one of the Elders in the community,

is old beyond his years. Holding the memories of the whole world,

alone, has worn him down. “This job has aged me,” he tells

Jonas. Through the course of the book, we see him as a

considerate, loving, wise, and kind man.

43

The Giver shows his consideration in the memories he gives

Jonas. He tries for a long while to avoid giving the boy painful

memories. When he finally realizes he must—that it is his job

and that he must lighten his burden—he feels awful. He cannot

look at Jonas after giving him the memory of war. “Forgive me,”

he says.

Jonas also learns the true meaning of love from The Giver, as he

is a very loving man. The Giver’s favorite memory, which he gives

to Jonas—of an extended family seated around a Christmas tree

exchanging gifts—is suffused with love. Later, when The Giver

tells Jonas about Rosemary, he reminds the boy of that memory.

He tells him that that was the feeling he had for Rosemary. “I

loved her,” he says. “I feel it for you, too.”

The Giver is also wise. He knows that the community pays far too

great a price for safety and security. “There are so many things I

could tell them,” The Giver tells Jonas about the Committee of

Elders. “I wish they would change. But they don’t want change.

Life here is so orderly, so predictable—so painless. It’s what

they’ve chosen.”

In his wisdom, and with Jonas’s help, The Giver finally realizes

that he must do something to bring about change. “Having you

here with me over the past year has made me realize that things

must change. For years I’ve felt they should, but it seemed so

hopeless. Now for the first time I think there might be a way.”

And he works out a plan for Jonas to leave the community, thus

returning all the memories back to the people.

44

The Giver is also kind. He could run away with Jonas—the boy

repeatedly asks him to—but he refuses. He tells Jonas,

“Remember how I helped you in the beginning, when the

receiving of memories was new to you? . . . You needed me then.

And now they will.”

Gabriel: Gabriel is a baby that Jonas’s father brings home at

night for extra nurturing. He is small for his age and does not

sleep through the night, so the Committee has labeled him

Inadequate. If he does not grow and learn to sleep through the

night, the Committee will release him.

We know very little about Gabe: He has pale eyes, he is able to

receive memories, and he sleeps poorly. But he is still an

important character in the book. Through him, Jonas learns to

give as well as receive memories. Gabe, and his impending

release, force Jonas to run away early, taking the baby with him.

The baby also gives Jonas a reason for living, for continuing the

journey when he is starved and exhausted and almost without

hope. Gabe is “the one person left for him to love.” He is also

Jonas’s link with, and hope for, the future.

Father: Jonas’s father is another important character in The

Giver. He is quiet, thoughtful, and playful with babies and

children. He is the only adult in the story who we hear using

nicknames: He calls his daughter Lily-billy, his son Jonas-bonus.

His most important role in the book may be to help show Jonas

that all is not as it appears. Jonas’s father loves newchildren

and spends his days happily caring for them. Yet he releases—

45

46

kills—them when their presence would somehow disrupt the

community. He releases a newborn twin who might cause

confusion in the community. When Jonas watches his father

release the newborn, he sees the sacrifice his community makes

for orderliness; he sees the lies everyone—including his father—

must tell to make it all seem right. When Jonas learns that his

father has voted to release Gabriel, because the baby does not

sleep through the night, he knows he must run away and take

the baby with him.

Asher: Asher, another Eleven, is Jonas’s best friend. He has a

cheerful disposition and always talks too fast and mixes up

words. He is someone everyone enjoys, because he is fun and

makes a game out of everything. Once Jonas gets memories, he

realizes that he loves Asher. He also realizes that without

memories, Asher cannot love him back.

Thinking about the characters

• Who would you rather have for a friend, Jonas or Asher? Why?

• Do you think The Giver would be a good grandfather? Why or

why not?

• What does Gabe represent at the end of this book?

• How can Jonas’s father be so fond of children and still perform

releases?

Opinion: What Have Other People Thought About The Giver?

It’s a winner!

The Giver has won many awards, the most prestigious of which

is the 1994 Newbery Medal. This award is given annually to the

author of “the most distinguished contribution to American

literature for children” published the preceding year. The

selection is made by fifteen librarians on the American Library

Association’s Newbery Committee. Look at your copy of The Giver

and you may see the award, printed in gold on the cover.

Lowry had previously won the 1990 Newbery Medal for her

historical novel Number the Stars. She remembers when the

time was approaching for the Newbery to be announced for

1994: “People were predicting that The Giver would win. I didn’t

want to be waiting by the phone. I went on a trip where no one

could reach me. I was in Antarctica when they made the

announcement.” When her publisher finally managed to reach

her by radioing her ship, Lowry was so excited that she turned to

the woman next to her and said, “You’ve probably never heard of

this, but I just won the Newbery Medal.” The woman had indeed

heard of the award—she was the former president of the

American Library Association!

47

Censored!

While The Giver is a popular book, it is also a controversial one. It

ranked number eleven on the American Library Association’s list

of most frequently challenged books of the 1990s. A challenged

book is one that a person or a group of people has tried to have

removed from library shelves.

Why has The Giver been challenged? Some people say the book is

too violent. They object to the passages regarding what is referred

to in the book as “release”: infanticide and euthanasia. Others

complain about references to Jonas’s “stirrings,” the natural

result of increased hormone production in the body. Parents with

such complaints have managed to get the book banned from

some school districts or to make it required that a student needs

a parent’s permission to read the book.

How does Lois Lowry feel about The Giver being such a frequently

challenged book? “I think it’s an honor I would prefer to forgo,”

she says. “It’s a difficult situation.” Lowry worries about the

chilling effect such controversy can have on librarians and

teachers, and what it means regarding whether or not the book

will be read. “Even though they [librarians and teachers] may like

a book and want to teach the book, they don’t have time to deal

with the bureaucracy that’s required, and they’re likely to choose

a less controversial book.”

48

49

The end?

Probably the biggest complaint Lowry gets from children about

The Giver has to do with its ending.

“Many kids want a more specific ending to The Giver,” she says.

“Some write, or ask me when they see me, to spell it out exactly.

And I don’t do that . . . because The Giver is many things to many

different people. People bring to it their own complicated sense of

beliefs and hopes and dreams and all of that. I don’t want to put

my own feelings into it, my own beliefs, and ruin that for people

who create their own endings in their minds.”

Lowry says that the open-ended conclusion is the reason she

won’t write a sequel to this popular book. “In order to write a

sequel, I would have to say: This is how it ended. Here they are

and here’s what’s happening next. And that might be the wrong

ending for many, many people who chose something different.”

Thinking about what others think about The Giver

• Do you think that The Giver seems like an award-winning

book? What other Newbery Medal–winning books have you

read? How does The Giver compare?

• How does the subject of censorship relate to the theme of The

Giver? What do you think the leaders in Jonas’s community

would say about censorship? What would Jonas and The

Giver say?

• How do you imagine The Giver ends? Would you like to see the

ending more spelled out? Why or why not?

Glossary

H

ere are some important words used in The Giver.

Understanding these words will make it easier to read

the novel.

anguish a strong feeling of misery or distress

annex an extra building that is joined onto or placed near a

main building

apprehensive worried and slightly afraid

buoyancy the ability to keep afloat

chastise to punish or criticize for wrongdoing

counsel advice

dejected sad and depressed

depth deepness

destination the place that a person or vehicle is traveling to

diminish to become smaller or weaker

disposition a person’s general mood

exempted freed or excused from a certain duty or obligation

fugitives persons who are running away, especially from the

authorities

integrity being honest and fair

interdependence dependency on one another

meticulous very careful and precise

50

monitored kept watch over

nurturer a person who tends to the needs of someone,

especially a child

obsolete out-of-date and no longer used

ominous threatening; signaling trouble, danger, or disaster

petitioned made a formal request

phenomenon something very unusual and remarkable

precision accuracy or exactness

prestige honor or esteem

prohibited forbidden

regulated controlled or managed

relinquish to give up

restriction something that limits

rueful full of regret, remorse, or sorrow

scrupulously with extreme care about details

solace comfort or relief from sorrow or grief

solemn very serious; grave

standardize to make the same as everyone or everything else

stirrings exciting, strong feelings

summit the highest point; the top

tentatively with uncertainty

transgression a violation of a law or duty

transmit to send or pass something from one person or place

to another

violation an act or instance of breaking a rule or law

yearning a strong wish for something

51

Lois Lowry on Writing

L

ois Lowry delights in writing books for young people. “It’s

what I do best,” she says, “and it’s what I like doing best.”

She has written more than twenty-five books for children and

young adults and won numerous awards—including the

prestigious Newbery twice—for her work. How does she do it?

“It would be wonderful to be able to describe some ritualistic

approach to writing fiction,” Lowry says. “But the truth is so

much more mundane. I sit at my desk every day. . . . I type words

into my computer. I retype them, rearrange them, and delete

them, and retype them again and again. . . . Then I look at the

words I’ve written and rearrange them again. Eventually,

somehow, a story is put together. There isn’t anything magical.

It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of fun, and a lot of waiting for the

words.”

Though Lowry has to wait for the right words, she knows a good

deal about the book she’s going to write before she begins

writing. “Books start in my head long before I start them on my

computer,” she says. “Before I ever sit down to write a book, I

spend a lot of time going over it in my head.”

When Lowry begins a book, she has “the main characters, the

beginnings of the plot, and a sense of the theme. The secondary

52

characters and the complications of the plot all come to me after I

begin writing, and then I follow my imagination through the

pages of the book. Parts of it take me by surprise when I’m

writing.”

Sometimes it’s the endings that surprise her. “The characters

create the ending,” she says. “I only move the characters along

and tell what they do. The decisions they make determine what

the outcome will be.”

As for theme, Lowry says, “My books have varied in content and

style. Yet it seems to me that all of them deal, essentially, with

the same general theme: the importance of human connections.”

It takes Lowry about six months to write a book, and then a little

additional time for rewriting. Once she has finished the book and

reread it, she chooses a title. “I think a good title should be fairly

short, easy to remember, easy to say, and should tell something

about the book without revealing too much.”

Then she sends the manuscript to her publisher. They usually

ask for revisions, which, though Lowry might not like doing

them, she does, because she knows revisions make the book

better. Revisions usually take about a month, then the book is

complete.

By the time one book is published, Lowry is well into writing her

next one. Where does she get her ideas? “Ideas come from your

imagination,” Lowry says. “If you are a writer you are also an

observant person. . . . And when you observe something, your

53

imagination begins to play.” If you are observant, she says, you

will never run out of ideas. “I think ideas are there in the

millions. The hard part is choosing which idea to focus on.”

For aspiring writers

Lowry has two important pieces of advice for aspiring writers:

Read and write.

“Read a lot. I mean really a LOT,” Lowry says. “And when you’re

reading, think about how the author did things. How did the

author create a character who is interesting? . . . How did the

author create suspense?”

Lowry practices what she preaches. “Reading is the most

productive thing for me,” she says. “If I read brilliant paragraphs,

I want to rush out and write brilliant paragraphs. . . . Whatever

you read affects what you write.”

And it’s so important that you write. “I always tell children that

they should write letters to their grandparents, and they groan

when I say that,” Lowry says. “But I don’t mean it as a joke. The

best way to write fiction is to write it as if you’re telling a story to

a friend. Getting into the habit of writing letters to friends and

grandparents is a great way to practice writing fiction. The best

fiction has that kind of intimate quality to it. And, if you’re not in

the habit of writing with that warmth and intimacy, then your

fiction becomes stilted.”

54

You Be the Author!

• Character sketch: Lowry knows her main characters

intimately when she begins a book. She says that she knows

“how they dress, behave, talk, react.” You can get to know the

characters in your stories in the same way. Think of a story you

might like to write. Who are the main characters? Write a

character sketch for each, telling how the character dresses,

behaves in different situations, talks, and reacts to different

things. Does your character have a nickname? What are her

favorite—and least favorite—foods? What are his fears, likes, and

dislikes? Include in the character sketch everything you can

think of to help bring the character to life in your mind; this will

help you bring your character to life on the page.

• To be continued . . . : Lowry is known for writing ambiguous,

or unclear, endings to her books. She does this to allow “readers

to create their own answer” to how the story ends. How do you

think The Giver ends? What happens to Jonas and Gabe? What

happens in the community? Write a page—or more—telling how

you think the story ends.

• Keep a journal: When Lowry was young, she “endlessly

scribbled stories and poems in notebooks.” Do the same. Also,

keep track of what happens in your life and in the lives of those

around you, and how it makes you feel. You may use these notes,

55

and the memories they evoke, one day. “Everything a writer

experiences as a young person goes into the later writing in some

form,” Lowry says. “As writers all we have, really, is the memory

of our own past combined with observation.”

• Observe: Lowry says, “I think all writers are observers and so

everywhere I go I am absorbing the details of that place.” If you

want to write you also need to observe. Make a point of doing as

Lois Lowry does, and try to absorb the details of life around you.

If you need help remembering what you see (smell, hear, taste,

touch, and feel), keep a small notebook and pen with you and

write down your observations.

• Write a letter: Follow Lowry’s advice and become a better

fiction writer by writing letters to family and friends. The best

letters—like the best books—are those that tell great stories.

Writing down your real-life stories in a way that will interest

friends and relatives will make you a better storyteller when it

comes to writing fiction. It will also make you more popular with

friends and relatives, as everyone enjoys a good letter!

56

Activities

• Make a memory book: Memories are an important part of

The Giver because they are an important part of life. Make a

memory book to help record some of your important memories.

Use a loose-leaf notebook or a book of your own making;

whichever you use, be sure to allow room to add more memory

pages as additional memories come to you. Begin by making a

list of people, places, and events that have been important in

your life. Look at each item on the list and see what memory or

memories arise in your mind. Then, think of ways to record these

memories. You might write a poem, a sentence, a paragraph,

even a story; you might draw or paint a picture, or use a

photograph you already have. Transfer these memories to your

book, just as The Giver transfers memories to Jonas. Unlike The

Giver, however, you’ll still have the memories in your head; your

book will just be a way to help you remember them, as well as a

way for you to share your memories with others.

• Get a library card!: If you don’t already have a library card,

get one—and use it. Librarians will help you find whatever kind of

book you’re looking for—funny, sad, scary—and even make some

good suggestions if you tell them what kinds of books you like.

• Picture this cover!: Lois Lowry is an accomplished

photographer as well as a wonderful writer; she took the two

57

photos on the cover of The Giver. If you have access to a camera,

take a photograph of your own that you think would be a good

cover for this book. Illustrate your cover if you don’t have a

camera. In either case, as you do your cover remember to think

about what you want to say with your image, what you want to

tell the reader about the book. Remember, too, that your goal

should be to make a person want to pick up the book and read it.

• Bike or hike: In Jonas’s community, the primary means of

transportation was bicycle. Only when the citizens visited other

communities, which was rare, did they travel by car or bus.

Think about how limited your range of movement would be if you

could only travel on foot or by bicycle. If possible, spend a day in

which you do not get in a car or on a bus or train. See if you can

get your family to go along with you in this experiment. At the

end of the day, talk about how your life would be different if you

always had such restrictions on how you could travel.

• Winning ways: Lois Lowry won the 1994 Newbery Medal for

The Giver. Read one or two other Newbery-winning books and

think about what it takes to be a winner. Some recent Newbery

Medal–winning books are:

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park (2002)

A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck (2001)

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis (2000)

Holes by Louis Sachar (1999)

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse (1998)

The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg (1997)

The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman (1996)

58

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech (1995)

Missing May by Cynthia Rylant (1993)

• What’s in a name?: Names are very important in The Giver.

There is a great deal of thought put into naming each newchild.

Think about your name. Who chose it? Why was it given to you?

Does it have special meaning in your family? You might want to

look up its meaning in a book of names. Then, think about this:

If you could choose a different name for yourself, what would it

be? Why?

• Become a Receiver of Memory: Jonas was chosen to

become the Receiver of Memory in his community. You can

become a Receiver, too, simply by interviewing an elderly friend

or relative about his or her past. You might want to find out what

it was like to be a child during previous generations. What games

did children play then? What did they wear? What did they eat?

What was school like? What kind of chores did they do? Did they

watch television? What about movies? What were the most

popular names? You might want to take notes or tape-record

your interview, so that later you can write it all down and share

these memories again with your “Giver.”

• Visit the “old”: While we don’t have a “House of the Old”

where all the elderly go, as Jonas does in his community, we do

have many nursing homes where a large number of elderly

people live. Many of these people are lonely and have few visitors.

You might like to ask an adult family member to arrange for you

to visit a nursing home, once, or on a regular basis. In addition

59

to bringing joy into other people’s lives, you might also hear some

wonderful memories from way back!

• What is love?: When Jonas asks his parents if they love him,

they tell him that it’s inappropriate to use a word like “love,” that

the word is “so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete.”

Think of someone you love, and find a way—a kind act, a poem,

a card—to show that you love them.

• Color my world: Research color and light. The Howard

Hughes Medical Institute has a Web site dedicated to the subject:

www.hhmi.org/senses/b110.html.

• Words, words, words: Precision of language is very

important in Jonas’s world. His best friend, Asher, has gotten

into trouble for repeatedly mixing up words, using distraught for

distracted, boyishness for buoyancy, smack for snack, and

expertness for expertise. Make a list of pairs of words that might

easily be confused. Then, play a game with friends or family

members in which you use the wrong word of the pair in a

sentence and you see if they can identify the incorrect word, then

think of the correct one.

• Don’t forget . . . : You can learn more about memory at the

Exploratorium’s online Memory Exhibition. The Web site is:

www.exploratorium.edu/memory/index.html.

60

Related Reading

Other novels by Lois Lowry

Autumn Street (1979)

Gathering Blue (2000)

Number the Stars (1989)

Rabble Starkey (1987)

Stay! Keeper’s Story (1997)

A Summer to Die (1977)

Taking Care of Terrific (1983)

Us and Uncle Fraud (1984)

Series by Lois Lowry

Anastasia series (Anastasia Krupnik, Anastasia Again!)

Sam series (All About Sam, Attaboy, Sam!)

Caroline and P. J. Tate series (The One Hundredth Thing About

Caroline, Switcharound)

Autobiography by Lois Lowry

Looking Back (1998)

Science fiction and fantasy

Among the Hidden and Among the Imposters by Margaret

Peterson Haddix

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Hermit Thrush Sings by Susan Butler

61

The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw

Off the Road by Nina Bawden

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

Under the Cat’s Eye by Gillian Rubinstein

The White Mountains trilogy by John Christopher

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

62

Bibliography

Books

Lowry, Lois. The Giver. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993.

Lowry, Lois. Looking Back. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998.

Newspapers and magazines

The Horn Book Magazine, July/August 1990, Volume 66, Issue 4,

pp. 412–424.

The Horn Book Magazine, July/August 1993, Volume 69, Issue 4,

p. 392.

The Horn Book Magazine, November/December 1993, Volume 69,

Issue 6, pp. 717–720.

The Horn Book Magazine, July/August 1994, Volume 70, Issue 4,

pp. 414–426.

The Reading Teacher, December 1994/January 1995, Volume 48,

Number 4, pp. 308–309.

Web sites

Bookpage interview with Lois Lowry:

wildes.home.mindspring.com/OUAL/int/lowrylois.html

BookSense interview with Lois Lowry:

www.booksense.com/people/archive/lowry.jsp

CNN online article, “Book Challenges Drop, but Librarians,

Writers, Remain Wary”:

www.cnn.com/2000/books/news/09/26/banned.books/

63

The Internet Public Library:

www.ipl.org/youth/AskAuthor/Lowry.html

Lois Lowry’s Web site:

www.loislowry.com

Random House, “A Message from the Author”:

www.randomhouse.com/teachers/authors/lowr.html

Scholastic, Lois Lowry biography and interview:

www2.scholastic.com/teachers/authorsandbooks/

authorstudies/authorstudies.jhtml

64