The novel follows Jonas, a boy living in a futuristic society that has strived for sameness and eliminated emotions, color, and pain. Jonas is selected to be the Receiver of Memories, inheriting the memories of life before sameness. Through these memories, Jonas learns of love, family, and pain. Horrified by his discoveries, he decides to flee the community with a baby named Gabriel in order to share these memories with others. The ending is ambiguous, though Jonas and Gabriel are implied to survive as they find signs of another community at the end of their journey.

1. The Giver is a 1993 soft science fiction novel by Lois Lowry. It
is set in a future society which is at first presented as a utopian
society and gradually appears more and more dystopian. The
novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth year of
his life. The society has eliminated pain and strife by
converting to "Sameness", a plan which has also eradicated
emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the
position of "Receiver of Memory," the person who stores all
the memories of the time before Sameness, in case they are
ever needed to aid in decisions that others lack the experience
to make. When Jonas meets the Giver, he is confused in many
ways. The Giver is also able to break some rules, such as
turning off the speaker and locking his door. As Jonas receives
the memories from the previous receiver—the "Giver"—he
discovers the power of knowledge. The people in his
community are happy because they don't know of a better life
but the knowledge of what they are missing out on could create
chaos. He faces a dilemma: Should he stay with the
community, his family living a shallow life without love, color,
music and knowledge or should he run away to where he can
live a full life?
The novel forms a loose trilogy with Gathering Blue (2000) and
Messenger (2004), two other books set in the same future era.

2. summary
This society remains harmonious by assigning jobs to each
individual according to a laborious evaluation of their skill, by
matching up husbands and wives based on personality to
balance out each other, and only allowing two children, one
male and one female, per family unit. There is also a subtle
theme of technology having only a minimal role in society;
throughout the book, it is taken for granted that Jonas's
community is without such technologies as television, or radio,
although computers are mentioned at one point and there is a
two-way microphone/speaker system used for announcements
and surveillance, similar to the telescreens of Nineteen Eighty-
Four. Later in the novel, it is also revealed that there is a video
surveillance system that monitors the entire community, albeit
the wide majority of the population is unaware of this.
Transportation is mostly limited to bicycles; however, cars and
airplanes exist in small numbers for the main use of
transporting food, possibly from other communities.
As time progresses in the novel, however, it becomes clear that
the society has lost contact with the ideas of family and love, at
least in the "more complete" sense at which Lowry hints.
Children are born to designated "Birthmothers" and then
family units can apply for children. If the family unit applies
for the maximum allowed number of two, it will always be one
boy and one girl. This is to keep the genders even. After family
units have served the purpose of raising the children in a stable
environment, they cease to exist, the parents going to a
communal housing facility for childless adults, and the

3. children becoming involved in their work and starting
monogenerational families of their own, forgetting their foster
parents who are growing old. The community maintains this
process using pills which suppress emotions, mainly romantic
love and sexuality, which they refer to as "Stirrings".
All the land near the Community and around the other, similar
communities clustered about the nearby river has been
flattened to aid agriculture and transportation. All animals
have been removed (more than likely killed, although they do
have meat from unknown sources) including the fish in the
water, and they are only present as stuffed animals; but the
society has no understanding of what they are, believing them
to be simple non-existent objects (the word animal is used to
describe a foolish person, with no understanding of the
connection between the two). A vaguely described system of
weather control is used so that the weather remains constant.
It is implied that genetic engineering has been used extensively
to manipulate human beings so that they are all colorblind,
and physically conform with Sameness. They even have the
same color eyes, as Jonas is seen as different because of his
light colored eyes.The only noted exception to physical
Sameness is people like Fiona who the Giver notes as having
red hair. It is never explained how people in the community
are able to identify each other.
The Community is run by a Council of Elders that assigns each
12-year-old the job he or she will perform for the rest of his or
her life, with a ceremony known as the Ceremony of Twelve,
where all Elevens (eleven-year-olds) turn into Twelves.

4. People are bound by an extensive set of rules touching every
aspect of life, which if violated require a simple but somewhat
ceremonious apology. In some cases, violating the rules is
"winked at": older siblings invariably teach their younger
brothers and sisters how to ride a bicycle before the children
are officially permitted to learn the skill. If a member of the
community has committed serious infractions three times
before, he or she may be punished by "Release". "Release" is a
procedure which is hinted at by the characters throughout the
book. Originally, it is thought of as a process where the
"Released" is sent to live outside of the community (known as
Elsewhere in the book), but still in a good place. Eventually, it
is revealed to be a system of euthanasia through lethal
injection, employed not only as punishment, but also to ensure
a monotony of means by which death occurs.
The book is told from a third-person limited point of view. The
protagonist, Jonas, is followed as he awaits the Ceremony of
Twelve. Jonas lives in a standard family unit with his mother
(a judge), his father (a "Nurturer") and his seven (later
becomes eight) year old sister named Lily. As he anticipates the
Ceremony of Twelve, which is the last ceremony, he has a
dream. He has to tell his family unit what his dream is and he
explains how he dreamed that he was in the House of the Old
(where he was before), alone in the bath house with a girl
called Fiona. He tries to explain how in his dream he wanted
her to take off her clothes so he could bathe her though he
knew it wasn’t right but she didn’t take him seriously and
refused.
After he told his family this, his mother tells him to take these
pills to suppress these emotions. At the Ceremony of Twelve,

5. each of the eleven-year olds is called up by their number,
which corresponds to the order in which they were born,
(Jonas is nineteen) and is given their Assignments. However,
the Elder skips Jonas’ number and proceeds with twenty. After
everyone has been given their Assignments, the Elder calls up
Jonas and apologizes for the confusion. It is revealed that
Jonas has been chosen to be the next Receiver of Memories.
The Elder reveals to him that training will involve physical
pain that the community has never felt before and that ten
years ago, another selection was made but it was a failure. He
is selected to be "Receiver of Memory" at the Ceremony of
Twelve because of his unusual "Capacity to See-Beyond",
which is the ability to see color (or in other cases, hear music,
which is referred to as "hearing beyond"), which the other
people in the community cannot. This is noted in the fact that
Jonas has lighter colored eyes, which only a few people, such as
Jonas, The Giver, Gabriel, and a six-year-old girl, have.
After Jonas has been selected to be the Receiver of Memories,
he is set aside to receive training through the Giver (who was
the last Receiver of Memory), who becomes his teacher. Jonas
telepathically receives memories of things eliminated from his
world: violence, sadness, and loss, as well as true love, beauty,
joy, adventure, animals, and family. Having knowledge of
these complex and powerful concepts alienates Jonas from his
friends and family, as well as making him more cynical
towards his previously sheltered life, as he often discusses with
the Giver. Eventually, these revelations prompt Jonas to seek
to change the community and return emotion and meaning to
the world. He and the Giver plan on doing this by having Jonas
leave the community, which would cause all of the memories he

6. was given to be released to the rest of the people, allowing them
to feel the powerful emotions that Jonas and the Giver feel.
Eventually, Jonas asks the Giver if he ever thinks about his
own release. This conversation leads to watching the release of
a lighter child of a set of twin boys born that morning. Jonas
watches in shock and horror as his father talks sweetly to the
baby before giving the newborn a lethal injection, and then
dumping the body down a garbage chute. It is also said by The
Giver that the previous Receiver of Memories had applied for
release, and had asked if she could inject it herself. The Giver
then reveals that he also has a child named Rosemary, who was
the previously selected Receiver of Memories.
During the course of the novel, Jonas's family temporarily
houses a baby named Gabriel, because he is unable to sleep
throughout the night and disturbs the other babies in the
"Nurturing Center". Jonas learns that unlike the other people
in his community, "Gabe" can receive memories from Jonas,
which he uses to help calm the baby. Because Gabriel still
cannot sleep through the night without crying after the extra
year he was given to learn how to sleep soundly, he is now
destined to be released. Desperate, Jonas flees the community
with Gabe. Also, he was given the instructions from the Giver
to flee, and release all the memories that he had stored to the
rest of the community. At first, the escape seems successful,
with all of the search planes finally giving up their search for
Jonas. Soon, however, food runs out and they grow weak. Cold
and hungry, Jonas and Gabe begin to lose hope, but then
remembering the memory of sunshine Jonas was given, he uses
it and regains strength. Jonas begins to no longer care about
himself, but only about Gabe's safety; it is here that he feels

7. happy as he remembers his parents and sister, his friends and
The Giver. Jonas and Gabriel cross a snow-covered hill in the
dark and find a sled on top, which Jonas remembers from the
first memory he ever received. He and Gabriel board the sled
and go down the hill where they hear music coming from some
houses.
The ending is ambiguous, with Jonas depicted as experiencing
symptoms of hypothermia. This leaves his and Gabriel's future
unresolved. However, their survival is made apparent in
Messenger, a companion novel written much later.