"The Giver"

[fiefoe]

Lois Lowry's dystopian is chilling but unconvincing. How can memory ever be shared like this? Is Sameness really what we most need to be worried about now?

• Release of newchildren was always sad, because they hadn’t had a chance to enjoy life within the community yet. And they hadn’t done anything wrong.
• “Lily,” her mother said fondly, “you’re very close to being an Eight, and when you’re an Eight, your comfort object will be taken away. It will be recycled to the younger children.
• No one mentioned such things; it was not a rule, but was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different about individuals.
• Fours, Fives, and Sixes all wore jackets that fastened down the back so that they would have to help each other dress and would learn interdependence. The front-buttoned jacket was the first sign of independence, the first very visible symbol of growing up. The bicycle, at Nine, would be the powerful emblem of moving gradually out into the community, away from the protective family unit.
• They were arranged by their original numbers, the numbers they had been given at birth. The numbers were rarely used after the Naming. But each child knew his number, of course. Sometimes parents used them in irritation at a child’s misbehavior, indicating that mischief made one unworthy of a name. Jonas always chuckled when he heard a parent, exasperated, call sharply to a whining toddler, “That’s enough, Twenty-three!”
• “Asher,” she said, “thank you for your childhood.”
• But the most conspicuous difference was the books.
• “I am going to transmit the memory of snow,”
• And unpredictable weather made transportation almost impossible at times. It wasn’t a practical thing, so it became obsolete when we went to Sameness.
• “I’m right, then,” The Giver said. “You’re beginning to see the color red.”
• “You do understand, don’t you, that this is my life? The memories?”
• Apparently that’s the way it was, once. Everyone had access to memories.
• “they had fire right there in that room. There was a fire burning in the fireplace. And there were candles on a table. I can certainly see why those things were outlawed. “Still,” he said slowly, almost to himself, “I did like the light they made. And the warmth.”
• “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”