A look back at Lois Lowry’s ‘The Giver’

The importance of memory

The first book I finished this year was a reread of Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel The Giver.

This young adult book is set in a place simply known as The Community and we follow year 12 Jonas as he becomes the new Receiver of Memories and discovers the importance of what memories and remembering can do for both individuals and society.

The first time I read this novel, I was most likely in eighth grade. And having reread - or rather listen to - Lowry’s book definitely reads differently.

When I initially thought about writing this piece, I wanted to go down the route of having a 12 year-old obtaining the spectrum of human memories seems wild. Especially since Jonas - and any previous receiver - are obtaining memories of things like war while having lived in what is best as a utopia. Jonas hasn’t had to deal with pain, starving, or anything extreme.

Yet, as I spent the last week or two thinking about The Giver, I can’t help but think about the role the titular Giver has in the book and the role Jonas plays. There is a framework that came to mind: the role teachers play.

Teaching and Memory

Although Jonas does have other teachers - or as the narrator describes them, “instructors” - the Giver in this book has only attempted once before the training of a Receiver of Memories. This happened a decade before the events of this book and that Receiver - Rosemary - had opted to be released,

As readers, we see the Giver struggles with how to teach Jonas what he needs to know as well as transferring the memories.

When the Giver discusses this difficulty of knowing the best structure, this made me wonder: wouldn’t the Giver at this point have several generations worth of memories of knowing how to do this process.

I pondered this because it would seem like with the title of “Receiver of Memories,” there would have been memories passed on the different ways this has been done. Then I thought about the process of teaching and memory.

Very much with how the community is set up as a comparison to the world today in 2025 is: when you reach being a 12 in the Community and partake in the Ceremony of the 12, it’s similar in a way of graduating high school and you start training for your career. And in the case of The Giver, the training the residents get is in the form of apprenticeships. And due to the ending of the book, we don’t see what the length of training that Jonas and the other twelves has; but I presume it’s somewhat similar to pursuing jobs in that some may take longer compared to others.

However, to use the framework of Jonas’ training to be similar to being a college student, it would make sense that there wouldn’t be a set road in training The Receiver of Memory.

This is because as I thought about when Jonas recieves a memory, he has to experience it as part of obtaining the memory. And often before or after having received a memory, the Giver will provide additional info to the memory: for example, the first memory in which Jonas receives the memory of the red sled, the Giver talks about how he wanted to start with that memory since it’s the same color as Fiona’s hair.

With this explanation, it very much reminds me of my art history courses. Our art historian would often show an image while giving us context about the artwork. For example, William Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode: The Têta à Tête:

With this 1743 satirical painting - it’s the second in the a series - we had been given information pertaining to stuff like the dark mark on the Viscount is often associated with having a sexually transmitted infection. My class was also given information pertaining to how this series of paintings centered around this marriage was arranged because the Viscountess’ family had enough money to cover the Viscount’s family’s monetary needs.

Very much the exploration of what the nuances in this piece represented in 1743 something I can see the Giver having to explain to Jonas.

Here’s where I think the framework can get interesting with thinking as the Giver being a teacher and talking about the above painting: we have to understand the current Receiver of Memory experiences in teaching the new Receiver about interpreting memories.

What the Receiver's job - once all trained in - is serving as a person with knowledge and insight from the memories on how to handle any situation that the other Community elders don’t know how to handle. For example, there was a situation in which a flying craft had landed and the Community Elders had gone to the Receiver to ask what they should do; after reflecting, the Receiver said they should wait and see what happens because he has memories of humans making decisions out of haste.

In someways, this feels like what teachers do during their lectures. They will often - from my personal experience - reflect on a memory that is relatebale to what they are teaching to help make their subject matter more relateable.

I recall in my tenth grade English class - who had taught the same eighth grade English class in which I first read The Giver - told us a story about this group of girls that had English right before lunch and they’d always would powder their noses and what not towards the end of class. After a couple of this, my English teacher addresses this routine and one of the girls tried to pop off; but the English teacher retorted, “Hey, there’s only enough room for one b*tch in this class, and that’s me.”

Now, from what I can recall from this class period that happened about 20 years ago at this point is that we had a similar situation happening during class in which a couple of students had been preoccupied with something else that was happening after class.

Regardless though, this makes me wonder if for Jonas how important the memories are verses the lessons and insight that the Giver is giving Jonas alongside the memories.

The reason why I ponder this is because the near year we spend in the book, we predominantly hear about Jonas' training going. And we hear the giver explain a couple of situations in which other Community Elders came seeking advice. Yet, don’t see on the page how the Receiver of Memories functions within the Community besides being told.

It’s interesting, then, to think about how Jonas would have to perform his job. Mainly because we can presume that he was given more examples of how the Giver had been consulted with other inquests. Yet, there’s the question for me if the Giver is able to pass on his own memories for Jonas to use down the road or not.

The reason why I wonder this is very much the fact that the mechanic of how the memories were given to a single person never was explain; yet it really doesn’t need to be.

Yet, I also wonder how long Jonas’ training lasted for and the full extent of it is.

I wonder this because within the United States, most people know the length a time someone who is a lawyer or doctor go to school for and what they had to do once they graduated.

What do y’all think?

While you ponder this, grab yourself a peppermint hot chocolate and enjoy thinking about this.