“The Giver” by Lois Lowry

So I am still stuck in my “life-of-humans-in-the-future” phase and I am waiting for my sister to finish Warwick Davis memoirs (which she says are very entertaining, by the way) so we can start a Picture of Dorian Gray (a bit of a change of pace). Since I figured I only have a couple of days left until she is finished I decided to go ahead and read (or re-read, rather) the Giver.

This book was the first book that I read completely on my own. It was the first book that I completed and concluded was my favorite book. Since then I have read several other books that have seemed to have taken its place and the images of the book seemed to have faded with the years. I thought I would re-read it remembering the premise and not remembering much else and figured that I could get though it in a couple of days. I enjoyed it immensely.

So, The Giver. Although most of us have read this book in middle school, I will give a small summary of the premise of the book. The book takes place in a time where equality is cherished above all else. But in order to be truly equal things have been remove from society that would cause inequalities. It is considered rude to draw attention to the differences of others and people have learned to operate without many differences that people use now to define who they are and cherish the life that they have. In The Giver people are assigned, homes, family units, and occupations that they believe that they will enjoy or rather excel at due to their expressed desire and aptitude.

Jonas is a boy that lives within the society and has been assigned the task to become the town’s new Receiver. The Receiver operates with the elders and is keeper of all of the wisdom that the town knows. He is a councilor to the other elders when they face something that they have not experienced before and he uses the memories of the past to advise and guide the elders’ decisions. The Receiver is the keeper of all of the memories of the world. These are all the memories of pain and pleasure, all the tings that would make people and things different in the world; before the community went to Sameness.

This is just one of those books that I am in aw of the creativity of the book. Completely unique and once I read it, it reminded me that differences are important, and things as simple as pleasure and as harsh as pain should not be taken for granted.