The Giver
First edition, 1993
The Giver by Lois Lowry was published in 1993 and won the Newbery Medal the following year. It is one of the earliest and most influential YA dystopian novels, predating the wave of series fiction that would follow The Hunger Games by fifteen years and establishing many of the conventions of the genre. The novel's ending, deliberately ambiguous, generated significant discussion on publication and continues to do so, even leading to frequent banning in school libraries. It was adapted for film in 2014. First printings in collectible condition are genuinely scarce.
Signed copy. Signed by Lowry on the title page: "with very best wishes / Lois Lowry / 2015."
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993. Newbery Medal winner (1994). ISBN: 0395645662. #10852.
Fine in fine dust jacket.
Signed copy. Signed by Lowry on the title page: "with very best wishes / Lois Lowry / 2015."
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993. Newbery Medal winner (1994). ISBN: 0395645662. #10852.
Fine in fine dust jacket.
Additional Details
The Giver is set in what is simply called the Community. The Community has achieved what its designers call Sameness. The climate has been flattened, terrain leveled, the natural world tamed into a predictable backdrop. Family units are assigned by committee. Spouses are matched on the basis of compatibility profiles. Newchildren are gestated by designated Birthmothers and distributed according to need. The elderly are Released with ceremony. Language is carefully monitored, and children are corrected for any improper word usage. When Jonas says he is "starving," his mother reminds him that he will never be starving, and that what he means is hungry. The Community is comfortable. Its people are content. Almost nothing is wrong by any measure with the Community.
Jonas is a careful, observant child who has always made his teachers a bit uneasy because of his attentiveness. At the Ceremony of Twelve, where children receive their life assignments, he is initially passed over, but then it is announced, separately and last, that he is to be the new Receiver of Memory, the most honored and most isolated role the Community offers. The previous Receiver, an elderly man who now becomes the Giver, lives in seclusion from the Community. He is known to be rude, to lie, and to turn away anyone who disturbs him. He is also the only person in the Community who knows what has been given up.
As the Receiver, Jonas is expected to receive the memories and knowledge of human history that the Giver possesses. The process is more transmission than teaching. The Giver places his hands on Jonas's back and gives him snow, the sensation of a sled on a hill, cold air, speed, color. Jonas has never experienced any of these. Color was eliminated from the Community generations ago. The more memories that are transferred to him, the heavier their weight. Sunshine, music, family celebrations, animals, and eventually the things that made Sameness necessary in the first place, such as war, starvation, and the grief that comes from loving someone and losing them. The Giver gives Jonas the memory of war last and it nearly breaks him.
What propels the novel's action is Jonas's discovery of what Release actually means. He has grown up understanding it as a kind of transition and peaceful departure. When he watches a recording of his father, a Nurturer, "releasing" a twin newchild who is slightly underweight, he understands for the first time that the Community's masked language for death has allowed its people to perform it without recognition. His father injects the infant with the ease of someone who has done it many times before, showing no emotion as he packages the body and disposes of it before returning to his work. He is not evil. He simply has no memory of what death means. This conditioning has shaped the entire Community. They are the way they are because of a series of choices meant to eliminate human suffering. In the process, they have eliminated that thing which also makes them human.
The speculative premise never overwhelms the human scale of the story, and Lowry's restraint with its darkest material is what gives the novel its lasting weight. The Community is not demonized, and there are no bloody final confrontations. The Community is the product of a social design that was meant to make things better and safer. That original goal is defensible, despite the end result. Lowry never condescends to her audience, which is probably why the novel has been frequently challenged and banned in certain school libraries since its publication, which is its own form of confirmation.
Jonas is a careful, observant child who has always made his teachers a bit uneasy because of his attentiveness. At the Ceremony of Twelve, where children receive their life assignments, he is initially passed over, but then it is announced, separately and last, that he is to be the new Receiver of Memory, the most honored and most isolated role the Community offers. The previous Receiver, an elderly man who now becomes the Giver, lives in seclusion from the Community. He is known to be rude, to lie, and to turn away anyone who disturbs him. He is also the only person in the Community who knows what has been given up.
As the Receiver, Jonas is expected to receive the memories and knowledge of human history that the Giver possesses. The process is more transmission than teaching. The Giver places his hands on Jonas's back and gives him snow, the sensation of a sled on a hill, cold air, speed, color. Jonas has never experienced any of these. Color was eliminated from the Community generations ago. The more memories that are transferred to him, the heavier their weight. Sunshine, music, family celebrations, animals, and eventually the things that made Sameness necessary in the first place, such as war, starvation, and the grief that comes from loving someone and losing them. The Giver gives Jonas the memory of war last and it nearly breaks him.
What propels the novel's action is Jonas's discovery of what Release actually means. He has grown up understanding it as a kind of transition and peaceful departure. When he watches a recording of his father, a Nurturer, "releasing" a twin newchild who is slightly underweight, he understands for the first time that the Community's masked language for death has allowed its people to perform it without recognition. His father injects the infant with the ease of someone who has done it many times before, showing no emotion as he packages the body and disposes of it before returning to his work. He is not evil. He simply has no memory of what death means. This conditioning has shaped the entire Community. They are the way they are because of a series of choices meant to eliminate human suffering. In the process, they have eliminated that thing which also makes them human.
The speculative premise never overwhelms the human scale of the story, and Lowry's restraint with its darkest material is what gives the novel its lasting weight. The Community is not demonized, and there are no bloody final confrontations. The Community is the product of a social design that was meant to make things better and safer. That original goal is defensible, despite the end result. Lowry never condescends to her audience, which is probably why the novel has been frequently challenged and banned in certain school libraries since its publication, which is its own form of confirmation.
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