The Giver

“It was one of the few rules that was not taken very seriously and was almost always broken.” 

In Jonas’s community, citizens tend to follow the rules because they value the order, security, and predictability the community provides. They also seem to fear the shame that comes with breaking a rule and receiving a punishment. However, this quote, which refers to kids teaching their younger siblings to ride bicycles before the community allows it, suggests that the community does have the capacity for rule-breaking. At first, it seems that this rule-breaking may simply have to do with youth, but as the story unfolds, examples of adults’ rule-breaking emerge. This sows doubt in Jonas—and the reader—about citizens’ motivations, and whether they truly desire the things the community professes to want.

“The evening proceeded as all evenings did in the family unit, in the dwelling, in the community: quiet, reflective, a time for renewal and preparation for the day to come. It was different only in the addition to it of the newchild with his pale, solemn, knowing eyes.”

The newchild in this quote is Gabriel, who has the same type of pale eyes as Jonas and the Giver. Pale eyes come with a certain depth and seriousness, and likely Receiver qualities such as the Capacity to See Beyond. Calling these eyes “knowing” suggests that Gabriel is wise beyond his years and able to sense and understand things that others might not comprehend. Family units have multiple rituals designed to encourage reflection, and this child is naturally inclined to think, feel, and reflect.

“He liked the feeling of safety here in this warm and quiet room; he liked the expression of trust on the [old] woman’s face as she lay in the water unprotected, exposed, and free.” 

This quote comes from Jonas’s trip to the House of the Old, where he helps his friend Fiona bathe an elderly resident named Larissa. Being “unprotected, exposed, and free” is unusual in their community, where people have security but little freedom. The Committee of Elders makes almost all decisions, supposedly in the best interest of the other citizens. Even though the environment outside the House of the Old is safe, it lacks the organic comfort of this bathing scene. Outside this facility, the community buzzes with activity and sounds: deliveries, announcements over the loudspeakers, recreation, manufacturing, and more. Safety means something a bit different here than it does in the House of the Old’s bathing area.

“The dream had felt pleasurable. Though the feelings were confused, he thought that he had liked the feelings that his mother had called Stirrings.” 

Jonas experiences his first Stirrings, or sexual desires, in a dream about his friend Fiona. People tend to have mild feelings in the community, so feeling a strong desire is unusual and startling to Jonas. As with other situations where he tries to describe something that’s new to him, he is confused and struggles to find exactly the right words. Even though he can’t describe the situation precisely, he knows how he felt about it.

“How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.” 

Jonas grapples with this difficult question about conformity shortly before receiving his job assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve. He is anxious, but his parents have reassured him the Committee of Elders knows what is best for him because they have considered his strengths, weaknesses, and inclinations. Asher and his mother mention that people have disappeared from the community without receiving a Ceremony of Release because they are so unhappy with a job assignment or other aspects of life there. Jonas hasn’t considered this possibility before, and he it doesn’t make sense to him because the community is designed with such care. This quote takes on irony later in the story, when Jonas becomes painfully aware that he doesn’t fit in. This awareness helps him decide to leave the community.

“‘This is the time,’ she began, looking directly at them, ‘when we acknowledge differences. 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. But today we honor your differences. They have determined your futures.’” 

Acknowledging differences is generally frowned upon in Jonas’s community, but it does serve a purpose. When the Committee of Elders assigns jobs to the Twelves, they look for specific qualities and aptitudes. For instance, they make Jonas’s father a Nurturer because he loves babies and has a kind, gentle, and quiet nature. The ceremony is one of the only instances in which differences are acknowledged because the committee fears that an awareness of unfairness, or inequality, could disrupt the order they’ve created. This is also the reason the community favors standardization, or "Sameness."For example, children of the same ride identical bicycles, and families receive the identical sets of furniture. Standardization reminds community members they are virtually identical. 

“Jonas moved his hands together, clapping, but it was an automatic, meaningless gesture that he wasn’t even aware of.” 

The book’s narrator describes automatic gestures at several points and suggests that these gestures lose meaning when people perform them without thinking. Sometimes, a gesture is automatic because it’s part of a ritual such as apologizing for certain infractions. People apologize automatically because they are expected to do so. The repetition of the action encourages the brain to turn off and the body to function on autopilot. In this quote, Jonas isn’t aware that he’s clapping because he’s overwhelmed by something that has happened at the Ceremony of Twelve: the Chief Elder skipped over him when assigning jobs, and he is worried that something is terribly wrong.

“But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered.” 

Using language precisely is of the utmost importance in Jonas’s community. Young children are smacked with a “discipline wand” (54)when they fail to choose the most precise and accurate word for something. Community members will smack small children with this wand so often that they stop talking, as in the case of Jonas’s friend Asher. To them, precise language matters more than emotional well-being. Parents also scold children for imprecise use of language, as Jonas’s mother and father do when he uses the word "love."

"There’s all that goes beyond—all that is Elsewhere—and all that goes back, and back, and back. I received all of those [memories], when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future. [...] I am so weighted with them.” 

As Jonas begins his Receiver training, the Giver explains the nature of receiving memories: Jonas must hold the present and past memories of his entire community and essentially, the world. The memories introduce feelings of joy as well as physical pain. Jonas must carry this heavy burden by himself, and in doing so, he removes this burden from others. This allows them to live a life free of significant pain, both emotional and physical. Jonas must draw upon the wisdom he gains from these memories—especially the painful ones—to help the Committee of Elders make decisions. These decisions chart the course for the community’s future, and the Receiver can help prevent the community from repeating the mistakes of history by carefully reviewing and interpreting the memories. However, Jonas will not receive any relief from the memories until he begins transmitting them to the Receiver who comes after him.

“Furniture was standard throughout the community: practical, sturdy, the function of each piece clearly defined.” 

Strength, practicality, and functionality are qualities the community values in both furniture and people. Many aspects of the community have been standardized, or made subject to "Sameness." Rules encourage citizens to behave in practical and predictable ways to minimize undesirable feelings, like anxiety. Each adult citizen performs a clearly defined job that helps the community function and reinforces his or her designated role in society. This system minimizes differences and competition in an effort to reduce conflict and achieve goals that benefit the community as a whole. As Jonas discovers throughout the book, standardization has some drawbacks. For instance, there are fewer opportunities to make meaningful decisions, appreciate different types of beauty, and celebrate one’s talents and individuality. As he begins questioning the value of Sameness, Jonas is moved by a memory of a birthday party “with one child singled out and celebrated on his day, so that now he understood the joy of being an individual, special and unique and proud” (121). 

“I have great honor. So will you. But you will find that that is not the same as power.” 

When becoming familiar with the Receiver role, Jonas learns the title is considered to have the highest level of honor, yet it does not yield power with the committee. While the elders do ask the Receiver for counsel, they often favor courses of action that keep community life orderly, predictable, and as easy as possible to manage: “[T]hey don’t want change. Life here is [...] so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen” (103). The Committee of Elders does not welcome change, and as Jonas and the Giver talk candidly, they regard the "honor" of Receiver with a degree of sarcasm. They surmise the community calls the strenuous role "honorable" to feel less guilty about placing such a heavy burden on one person. 

“How could you describe a sled without describing a hill and snow; and how could you describe a hill and snow to someone who had never felt height or wind or that feathery, magical cold?” 

This quote addresses the limitations of language and the role of experience in understanding. Jonas doesn’t understand what a sled is when the Giver tries to describe it, but he understands immediately once he experiences it through a memory. This excerpt illustrates a future challenge Jonas will undertake when he tries to subtly share his new knowledge with Asher and Fiona. Jonas realizes it is difficult for people to understand things they haven’t experienced. 

“We really have to protect people from wrong choices.” 

When Jonas starts to understand the nature of choices, he declares that having no choices is unfair. The Giver then helps him realize why the community keeps its citizens from making decisions for themselves. When Sameness decreases, the number of choices increases, and along with it the number of opportunities to choose wrong. Before this, Jonas only considered low-risk decision-making, such as choosing between two toys of different colors. The Giver explains that many choices are not this safe. Jonas realizes that choosing the wrong mate or job could have very undesirable consequences. He then understands that this is why the community’s leaders “don’t dare to let people make choices of their own” (98).  

“Sometimes I wish they’d ask for my wisdom more often—there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change.” 

The Giver feels unable to change the things he dislikes about the community, in part because the other elders don’t value his opinions as much as they should. The elders are married to traditions and rules that have existed for many years. Their resistance to change is stronger than their reverence of the Giver and his wisdom. This is a major reason the Giver feels helpless and unable to fix problems such as the erasure of color and the killing of infants deemed "Inadequate"(42) for community life because they are twins or need extra care. It’s likely that the Giver also wants the other elders to request his wisdom more often because he’s gone to great pains to acquire it; the most excruciating memories often yield the most wisdom.

“Jonas pulled at the rope, trying to steer, but the steepness and speed took control from his hands and he was no longer enjoying the feeling of freedom but instead, terrified, was at the mercy of the wild acceleration downward over the ice.” 

This memory of sledding provides a stark contrast to the first memory Jonas receives about this pastime. The earlier memory inspires awe and wonder as Jonas experiences snowflakes and the wild, free feeling of sliding downhill for the first time. This quote describes a scary, painful sledding incident. Freedom is exhilarating and positive in the first sledding memory; it is filled with terror and danger in the second. Jonas realizes he is no longer in control, and he is at the mercy of the hill’s slope, rocks, and ice.

“The colors of the carnage were grotesquely bright: the crimson wetness on the rough and dusty fabric, the ripped shreds of grass, startlingly green, in the boy’s yellow hair.” 

The quote comes from the first memory that teaches Jonas about the horrors of war. He sees many people lying on a battlefield, dying, including a child in uniform. The colors of the scene heighten its emotional impact, much as they help intensify the emotions Jonas experiences in other situations. The colors also seem to keep this memory at the top of Jonas’s mind. When he goes to play a game with Asher and some other children, he quickly realizes it is a war game and feels shaken as he recalls the traumatic war scene he witnessed. The colors have made this scene feel real, and they shocked him into a new, awakened state of being. Without this type of experience, his friends do not understand why Jonas is upset about the game. They also have no concept of war, so they have no idea that they’re reenacting violence and cruelty.

“Jonas did not want to go back. He didn’t want the memories, didn’t want the honor, didn’t want the wisdom, didn’t want the pain.” 

Jonas feels shaken by the traumatic memories he has recently experienced. He realizes honor will not make his life better, and his wisdom probably won’t change the community for the better because others are so set in their ways. He feels overwhelmed by the emotional pain of the difficult memories he has taken on, and the physical pain just adds to the burden. He also feels hurt, angry, and frustrated that he’s expected to carry the entire world’s traumas. It is too much for one person to handle, and he sees how it has harmed the Giver, who he has grown to adore. Not only does Jonas want to stop Receiver training; he’s beginning to think the community isn’t the place for him. However, he’s not sure how to leave.

“Somehow they were not at all the same as the feelings that every evening, in every dwelling, every citizen analyzed with endless talk. [...] These were deeper feelings and they did not need to be told. They were felt.” 

This quote touches on the difference between the way Jonas experiences feelings after beginning Receiver training and the way other members of the community experience them. Jonas begins having intense feelings once he starts receiving memories and when he stops taking pills to quell Stirrings. The other people in the community do not experience feelings in this way, and they do not have access to memories other than their own. The community members do not have depth to their range of emotions. When Jonas experiences horrors such as starvation, war, and cruelty through received memories, his understanding of pain, sorrow, and grief expands exponentially. This changes the way he sees the world—and the way he thinks it should be. Jonas finds that talking about dreams and feelings, as he used to do in daily rituals with his family, doesn’t bring the magnitude of understanding he receives from seeing and experiencing things in memories. 

“If you were to be lost in the river, Jonas, your memories would not be lost with you. Memories are forever.”

The Giver explains to Jonas that memories aren’t really the property of a single individual. People eventually die, but the memories they make with others live on in a never-ending cycle. Even though Jonas and the Giver are tasked with holding all of the world’s memories, old and new, they cannot change the nature of these memories. They cannot make the memories disappear. They can only make themselves disappear, for instance by drowning in the river. If this happens, the memories make their way to all of the community’s citizens, who are not emotionally-equipped to deal with such trauma.

“He liked the thought of seeing his father perform the ceremony, and making the little twin clean and comfy. His father was such a gentle man.” 

Jonas loves that his father is a sensitive, gentle caretaker of a man. Imagining his father cleaning and comforting an infant also comforts him, even though the reason for the cleaning and comforting is very sad and disturbing. When Jonas learns that his father kills babies deemed unfit for the community, he realizes that this man he adores is not so tender and gentle. Jonas feels his father has lied to him, which leaves him disillusioned and heartbroken. It also makes him wonder who else has been lying to him.

“The worst part of holding memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”

The Giver tells Jonas loneliness is the worst part of being the because the role requires physical and emotional isolation. The Receiver has his own quarters and is not permitted to share memories or knowledge. Additionally, even if he tried to get another person to understand what he is feeling and experiencing, it would be nearly impossible. Jonas realizes this once he begins to feel physical pain in his received memories. After receiving a memory about breaking a leg, he feels alienated from his family members. He realizes that they have “never known pain,” and this realization makes him “feel desperately lonely” (110).However, according to the Giver, if other people were to experience memories and share them with each other, their mutual understanding would increase. They would also be able to feel closer and better help each other.

“At dawn, the orderly, disciplined life he had always known would continue again, without him. The life where nothing was every unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without color, pain, or past.”

When Jonas crosses the river to leave the community, he looks back at the world he’s escaping. He is keenly aware that he has chosen a new life that will be incredibly different from the one he has known. His old life was in a highly engineered environment, where nearly all choices were made for him. There were very few surprises or differences; these things had largely been removed through standardization, specialization, and organization. While Jonas acknowledges that he will lose the security, convenience, and predictability of his old community, he believes he will gain the benefits that come with a wider range of choices and experiences, such as love, color, and shared memories. 

“Once he had yearned for choice. Then, when he had had a choice, he had made the wrong one: the choice to leave. And now he was starving. [...] If he had stayed, he would have starved in other ways. He would have lived a life hungry for feelings, for color, for love. And Gabriel? For Gabriel there would have been no life at all. So there had not really been a choice.” 

The hope Jonas felt when escaping the community is waning. He wonders if he made a mistake in leaving behind the guarantee of food, shelter, safety, and security. Jonas also feels guilty for putting Gabriel and himself at risk of starvation. However, as Jonas works through his thoughts and feelings, he realizes that having his material needs met isn’t the only requirement for a good life. His old community would have robbed him of the chance to experience feelings fully, or to share love with others. And Gabriel, the child he loves so much, would be robbed of the opportunity to live. He believes had no choice but to leave if he wanted to save Gabriel.