102 pages • 3 hours read
Lois LowryThe Giver
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 22-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
The landscape starts to change. The road narrows and becomes bumpy. Jonas falls off the bike and twists his ankle. It aches constantly. Since he has become “newly aware that Gabriel’s safety depended entirely upon his own continued strength” (172), he worries that the injury continues to bother him. Jonas and Gabriel see animals for the first time, and Gabriel mistakes a bird for an airplane, causing Jonas to panic and then laugh. Jonas begins to fear that he and the baby will starve since food is becoming hard to find. He remembers how meals were brought to the community each day and tries to ease his stomach pains with memories of feasts. He recalls a time when he said he was starving, and how his parents taught him that "hungry" (70) was the correct word. They told him he’d “never be starving” (173), but now he and Gabriel were because of his decision to leave the community. For a moment he thinks he was wrong to leave the security of his old life, but then he decides that he would have starved in other, less tangible ways if he had stayed. Plus, Gabriel wouldn’t have lived.
As the landscape becomes hilly, Jonas feels weak and struggles to pedal the bike. He and Gabriel endure several days of rain. Both he and Gabriel cry. Gabriel cries because he is hungry, cold, and weak: “Jonas cried, too, for the same reasons, and another reason as well. He wept because he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself” (174).
Chapter 23 Summary
Jonas is weaker than ever but certain the place he seeks is not far ahead. He doesn’t see, hear, or smell any evidence that this destination is near, but he has a feeling about it. Jonas’s heart breaks when he sees that Gabriel is shivering. He holds the baby to his chest and wraps his tunic around them both. It begins to snow, and Jonas tries to show Gabriel the beauty of the snowflakes, but he gets “no response from the child who had once been so curious and alert” (176). There are tear stains on the baby’s dirty cheeks. Jonas cannot make the bike’s pedals move anymore, so he begins to walk down the road with Gabriel. As he lets the bike fall to the side of the road, he thinks of allowing himself and Gabriel to “slide into the softness of snow, the darkness of night, the warm comfort of sleep” (176).
Realizing he has shed most of the memories from the Giver, Jonas wonders if he can still transmit memories to Gabriel that will help him survive. With some effort, he is able to give the child a memory of sunshine. For a moment, Jonas considers keeping this memory for himself, “unburdened by anything or anyone else,” but he is overcome by a “yearning to share the warmth with the one person left for him to love” (177). Brief memories of warmth help the pair take a few steps forward at a time, but the going is difficult. Jonas decides that “[h]is entire concentration now had to be on moving his feet, warming Gabriel and himself, and going forward” (178). The summit of the hill they’re climbing seems distant, and Jonas is not sure what is on the other side of it. However, they have no choice but to continue, even though Jonas can barely move his legs.
As Jonas and Gabriel struggle up the hill, Jonas feels a surge of joyful memories. They involve his parents and sister, Asher and Fiona, and the Giver. These are his first memories that are truly his, and it gives him strength. The ground begins to level, and he locates a sled that points toward the bottom of the hill’s other side. Jonas and Gabriel sled down the hill, clinging to each other, toward the place Jonas “had always felt was waiting, the Elsewhere that held their future and their past” (179). Jonas sees lights in the distance, the colorful ones from the love-filled Christmas memory. Soon he feels certain that someone is waiting for both him and Gabriel below. He hears people singing for the first time and senses that music is coming from behind him as well. He wonders if it is real or merely an echo.
Chapters 22-23 Analysis
Jonas’s decision to escape the community is an expression of freedom, individualism, and rebellion. Jonas knows the community will suffer when faced with the memories he’s been holding, yet he feels that he must fight for his life and his autonomy. He must also fight for Gabriel’s life. The community was ready to kill Gabriel to prevent a few people from the inconvenience of tending to a baby’s nighttime cries. Jonas judges that preserving Gabriel’s life matters more than making someone else’s life a little calmer and easier. He rejects the notion that avoiding pain is necessary, even though it’s a foundational tenet of the community that raised him. He is ready to endure the pain the journey presents and deal with any guilt he feels from causing others pain.
Jonas flees the community feeling confident in his decision and ready to face discomfort, yet he starts to doubt his choice when the going gets especially tough. He wonders if he has done a terrible thing by taking Gabriel to a place where he might freeze or starve. When he concludes that his decision was not a true choice but a life-or-death situation, he feels more assured that he did the right thing. The memories Jonas has received from the Giver help him and the baby hide from search planes and stay warm when snow chills their bones. However, it’s his own first memories that help him take some of the final steps toward their destination, when it looks as if they are about to perish. The memory that touched him the most—the Christmas memory featuring grandparents and love—guides him toward the finish line, on the sled from the first memory the Giver shared with him. At the end of his journey, the people and things Jonas loves the most are all with him through his memories.
Related Titles
By Lois Lowry
