The Giver Quotes
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The Giver by Lois Lowry
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The Giver Quotes (showing 1-30 of 130)
The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be
shared.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
tags: loneliness, memories, pain, share
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We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
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If you were to be lost in the river, Jonas, your memories would not be lost with you. Memories are
forever.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
tags: lowry
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For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind
him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music
too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
tags: music
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I liked the feeling of love,' [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall,
reassuring himself that no one was listening. 'I wish we still had that,' he whispered. 'Of course,' he
added quickly, 'I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be
organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live.'
...'Still,' he said slowly, almost to himself, 'I did like the light they made. And the warmth.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
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Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
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It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?
Lois Lowry, The Giver
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The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour,
pain or past.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
tags: dystopia, future, life, sci-fi, the-giver, utopia
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They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he
was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
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I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
tags: alienation, alone, belonging, jonah, life, lois-lowry, lonely, place, sorry, strange, stupid, the-giver, wisdom
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I knew that there had been times in the past-terrible times-when people had destroyed others in
haste, in fear, and had brought about their own destruction
Lois Lowry, The Giver
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Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which
would give another the experience of sunshine?
Lois Lowry, The Giver
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Today is declared an unscheduled holiday.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
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...now he saw the familiar wide river beside the path differently. He saw all of the light and color and
history it contained and carried in its slow - moving water; and he knew that there was an Elsewhere
from which it came, and an Elsewhere to which it was going
Lois Lowry, The Giver
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Gabe?"
The newchild stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him.
"There could be love", Jonas whispered.
Lois Lowry, The Giver
tags: love, sleep, stirred, whispered
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What Truth Should We Take Away from The Giver?
The Noble Lie
The new film adaptation of Lois Lowrys Newbery award-winning 1993 young adult
novel, The Giver, directed by Phillip Noyce, follows the book in making use of the
conceit of the noble lie first formulated by Plato in the Republic. A noble lie is a
false story that leaders of a community tell the general populace for their own
good. A noble lie obscures the truth, but eliminates potential conflict and secures
harmonious political life. In the Republic Plato has the chief characters of his
dialogue, Socrates, Glaucon and Adeimantus, construct an imaginary city, a city in
speech, that is perfectly just. But the city is founded upon a lie about the natural
origin of the peoples that helps maintain the three strictly-defined social classes
upon which the justice of the city is based.
The elders of the apparently utopian Community at the center of The Giver tell a
lie about the world that existed before an undescribed global disaster. They say
nothing to the general populace about war, poverty, disease, starvation, or other
evils, which do not exist in the Community. But they also do not permit love, strong
emotion, sex, religion, even music and colorbecause they see these things as the
sources of diversity and thus of conflict and thus of the evils they have eliminated.
Within the Community, Sameness is the driving political principle. Only one elderly
man, the Receiver of Memories, knows in full what the world was like before the
Community came into existence. In his mind he stores all the memories from that
older world, both good and the bad, so as to be a source of wisdom for the
Community elders. The Giver is the story of a boy, Jonas (played by Brenton
Thwaites), twelve in the book but more like sixteen in the movie, who is chosen to
be the next Receiver of Memories, and so becomes apprentice to the elderly
Giver. But when Jonas discovers from the Giver that the Community has been
founded upon a noble lie, he takes it upon itself to risk everything in order to unveil
the truth.
Sameness Everywhere
As a film, The Giver has a good premise but is rather lackluster in the execution. A big
part of the problem is that the central conflictlying baddie elders vs. innocent Jonas
and his friendsis inherently two-dimensional. The best sci-fi narratives play with the
questions of what is essential to human being and to political life, and The Giver plays
with both questions and at times in interesting ways. The Community, for example, like
the ideal city in Platos Republic, eliminates the natural family, which serves as the
cause of some interesting conflict. But somehow the absence of the natural family from
the Community, and even of love, color, and a sense of the horror of death, fails to
generate the kind of interest that we experience when we think about the essential
place of emotions in human life through the Star Trekcharacters of Spock and Data. The
Giver tries to make the devils advocate argument that choice and diversity and beauty
only lead to conflict and suffering, but its a tough argument to make and its never done
convincingly. A big part of the problem is that Meryl Streeps icy Chief Elder is
predictable, boring, and in need of a better hairdresser, and Jeff Bridges Giver, even in
the scene with Taylor Swifts Rosemary, never gives us a really compelling point of
emotional connection (it doesnt help that the voice Bridges gives to the Giver is
unnatural and distracting). In the end, its the lack of rounded characters, combined with
a two-dimensional central conflict the resolution of which is never really in doubt, that
causes The Giver to come off flat and disappointing, inflicted with the same malaise of
Sameness which governs the Community it depicts.
Beyond the Coast of Dystopia
In the Republic, Plato engages in an exercise somewhat like the sci-fi writerindeed, the
noble lie imagined by Socrates and his friends has a certain fantasy element to it. In
thinking about the question of justice, Plato plays with the questions of what is
necessary to human nature and political life. The Giver does the same, but the answers
the film comes up with are ones far different than the ones Platos characters find. What
truth does Jonas discover beyond the coast of the dystopian Community? He discovers
that human happiness depends upon the very things the elders of the Community have
kept secret. Love can lead to war, yes, but a truly fulfilling human life without love is
impossible.
But perhaps even more fundamental to love is choice. In the final confrontation
between the Chief Elder and the Giver, the Chief Elder declares that the power of
choice had to be taken away from the members of the Community because when
human beings are given the power to choose they always choose badly. In
vanquishing the world of Sameness The Giver upholds choice and diversity as the
defining features of human nature. This is the truth Jonas struggles to make known.
The good memories Jonas receives from the Giver show that religion, for example, is
part of the truth of what makes us human, but its religion enfolded within
choicethat is celebrated, religion as an expression of human diversity, not religion
as worship of the one true God. Jonas also receives memories that celebrate the
value of traditional marriage and the family, but again, what is being valued is one
among the many varied and beautiful ways in which human beings live out their
loves, not the special value of this particular institution. The Giver also pays a
certain homage to Christian virtuein the Givers exhortation to the elders on love,
hope and faith and in the Christmas carol in the films closing shotbut it is not full-
blooded Christian virtue that is being honored but rather Christianity as a symbol of
a richer form of human existence. What Jonas finds beyond the coast of dystopia, in
short, are the liberal virtues (understanding liberal in the broadly philosophical
sense) of which choice, not charity, is the greatest.
And Yet Nature Abides
It was the first-century B.C. Roman poet Horace who in one of his epistles wrote,
You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she will always come running back.
In upholding the liberal virtues The Giver drives out those certain aspects of human
nature which exist prior to our choices. For Plato, and for the Christian tradition up
until the late middle ages, what is most important is the direction that nature gives
to our choices, not the power of choice all by itself. It is nature that directs us to the
traditional understanding of the family, to love (understood in a definite ways), to
the intrinsic value of all human life, to music, and to color. It is nature which
celebrates (within limits) diversity. Nature directs us to our fulfillment, which makes
it very difficult entirely to do away with nature even when we do our best to drive it
out.
And so we see in the argument of The Giver, in its condemnation of the values of
the Community, a clear affirmation of natures ways: biological reproduction, the
natural family, the value of color and the fine arts, the horror of euthanasia and of
death generally. Though the movie itself is ambiguous on the point, the finest truth
we can receive from The Giver is that the grandeur of human choice is only realized
when we choose according to the direction given by our shared human nature.
What did you think of The Giver (film or book)? Share your thoughts in the
comments.
The Giver has several themes. The most important themes of the story are:
Coming of Age Twelve is the most important time in these characters lives. After that, age
is not considered important. This is the age to leave childhood behind, and at this time, your
lifes calling is decided.
Sex is a purely mechanical affair in which girls are chosen at age 12 to become
birthmothers and spend 3 years at the Birthing Center having 3 babies that they do not
raise, but who are given to volunteer families. Sexual urges are suppressed in all others.
Death is referred to as Release from the community and going Elsewhere.
One of the most important themes in The Giver is the significance of memory to human life.
Lowry was inspired to write The Giver after a visit to her aging father, who had lost most of
his long-term memory. She realized that without memory, there is no painif you cannot
remember physical pain, you might as well not have experienced it, and you cannot be
plagued by regret or grief if you cannot remember the events that hurt you. At some point in
the past the community in The Giver decided to eliminate all pain from their lives. To do so,
they had to give up the memories of their societys collective experiences. Not only did this
allow them to forget all of the pain that had been suffered throughout human history, it also
prevented members of the society from wanting to engage in activities and relationships that
could result in conflict and suffering, and eliminated any nostalgia for the things the
community gave up in order to live in total peace and harmony. According to the novel,
however, memory is essential. The Committee of Elders does recognize the practical
applications of memoryif you do not remember your errors, you may repeat themso it
designates a Receiver to remember history for the community. But as Jonas undergoes his
training, he learns that just as there is no pain without memory, there is also no true
happiness.
The Relationship Between Pain and Pleasure
Related to the theme of memory is the idea that there can be no pleasure without pain and
no pain without pleasure. No matter how delightful an experience is, you cannot value the
pleasure it gives you unless you have some memory of a time when you have suffered. The
members of Jonass community cannot appreciate the joys in their lives because they have
never felt pain: their lives are totally monotonous, devoid of emotional variation. Similarly,
they do not feel pain or grief because they do not appreciate the true wonder of life: death is
not tragic to them because life is not precious. When Jonas receives memories from the
Giver, the memories of pain open him to the idea of love and comfort as much as the
memories of pleasure do.
The Importance of the Individual
At the Ceremony of Twelve, the community celebrates the differences between the twelveyear-old children for the first time in their lives. For many children, twelve is an age when
they are struggling to carve out a distinct identity for themselves, differentiating themselves
from their parents and peers. Among other things, The Giver is the story of Jonass
development into an individual, maturing from a child dependent upon his community into a
young man with unique abilities, dreams, and desires. The novel can even be seen as an
allegory for this process of maturation: twelve-year-old Jonas rejects a society where
everyone is the same to follow his own path. The novel encourages readers to celebrate
differences instead of disparaging them or pretending they do not exist. People in Jonass
society ignore his unusual eyes and strange abilities out of politeness, but those unusual
qualities end up bringing lasting, positive change to the community.
The importance of memory, the importance of individuality and freedom of choice are the
main themes of the Giver because first of all, memories are most important tools to great a
culture and the topic of the novel is almost totally about that. Moreover, freedom of choice is
so important and I think it includes individuality. It is important because everything in the
society is under control. Climate, sexuality, popularity, feelings, jobs, education etc. If those
people are allowed think and chose their life, they realize that their whole life is illogical and
they will try to escape and there will be chaos.
dasnczeng | Student, Undergraduate | (Level 1) Honors
Posted June 27, 2012 at 7:55 PM (Answer #11)
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I believe that the main theme of The Giver is emotion. Throughout the entire book you see
that this utopian society is denying its people emotional freedom. They must take pills to
control "Stirrings." Also, the reason why The Giver and Jonas planned for him to run away
was so the people would have to see the truth and bear these memories and emotions by
themselves. The people of Jonas' community are able to release (kill) people with no
problems whatsoever. That's just how unemotional they are.
joannvac | (Level 1) eNoter
Posted January 30, 2014 at 3:43 PM (Answer #13)
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One main theme is: "Memories should be shared and are important to the future". In other
words, memories of the past help one to not repeat the bad things that have happened.
Memories, both good and bad, make one stronger and wiser.
The main theme of this book is about choice and freedom. You can tell throughout the
whole book that Jonas wants someone to know what he seen from the Giver until he ran
away to let everyone see the memories.
