The Giver
A society without pain, without colour, without memory. Jonas receives all of it at once. Lowry asks: which would you choose?
The Receiver of Memory
Lois Lowry's 1993 Newbery Medal winner follows Jonas, a twelve-year-old in a Community where everything has been made Sameness: no colour, no pain, no strong emotion, no real choice. When Jonas is selected as the new Receiver of Memory at the annual Ceremony of Twelve, the old Giver begins transmitting to him everything the community has surrendered: snow, music, sunburn, love, war, colour. With the memories come questions the Community cannot tolerate. The novel was one of the most banned books of the 1990s and has never gone out of print.
Reading The Giver
Awakening
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Chapter
"The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it.
"Lois Lowry · The Giver
Lowry was inspired partly by her father, who in old age had lost most of his memories. She thought about what the world would look like to someone who had never had memories to lose and began writing from there.
The novel was the most challenged book in American schools throughout the 1990s, banned for its depiction of euthanasia. The challenges only increased its readership. A film adaptation was made in 2014 starring Jeff Bridges.