Literature Companion: The Giver

“The Giver” by Lois Lowry was first published in 1993. It is an American children’s novel. The story is set in a society that is initially presented as a utopian society in the novel, but it slowly begins to appear more and more dystopian. The story is centered on a boy named Jonas. It follows twelfth and thirteenth years of the boy’s life. With the help of a plan called “Sameness” pain and strife has been eliminated from the society, but at the same time the emotional depths has also been eradicated from the people’s lives. As the story progresses, the boy Jonas is chosen as the Receiver of Memory. It is an inherited position in the society. The Receiver of Memory happens to be the person who stores all the past memories of the time before the ‘Sameness’ was introduced to the word. The memories of the past are stored in case they ever need those memories to help in the decisions they make or to provide the experience which the others lack.