Finished: The Giver (Lowry). Very good book! This was one of Jenny Cate's favorite books in middle school, and I'm so glad I decided to read it! The Giver is a book about people who live in a dystopian society where everything is the same. It is called Sameness. The people feel no true emotions, therefore, make no hard decisions. They don't even see color or have animals or weather or cars or dissension or love. This is all they've known for as long as they can remember, so they think they are happy. Babies are born and assigned to parents, who are allowed two children. From the time they first feel "stirrings" members of the society are given pills to squash their sexual desires, so as far as I can tell...none of the husbands and wives ever have sex. Their goal is to raise the children until they are productive adults and then keep on with their own jobs until they are no longer productive. Then, they become "olders" and live with the other older people. Eventually, olders are "released", along with people who commit too many transgressions, and newborn babies who are not deemed worthy enough to go and be raised by parents. It's never indicated exactly where the babies come from, except that there are some women who are assigned the role of "birther". The father's are never mentioned...and perhaps the birthers are inseminated.

Anyway...there is only one person who has knowledge of anything other than the world they live in. He is "the Receiver" and is the keeper of all the memories of the past. He doesn't even have first-hand knowledge of events, feelings, etc. from the past, but they have been passed on to him. When Jonas, the main character of the story, turns 12 his "career assignment" is to become the new Receiver. He has shown all the special qualities needed, and someone must learn from the Receiver to carry on the tradition, since the Receiver is getting old. Jonas must receive memories, both good and bad from the Receiver, who now, since Jonas is the new Receiver, becomes.....The Giver. Jonas first learns about snow, and to actually feel it and is given the memory of going down a hill on a sled. He then learns about sunshine, sunburn, colors, etc. The Giver must also give Jonas bad memories, so he learns what it feels like to have a broken leg, and then to be starving, and then to be lying on a battlefield wounded, watching another young soldier die before his very eyes. He also learns, though, about true happiness, family and love when he sees a family celebrating Christmas. Jonas and the Giver work together for nearly an entire year. Jonas changes deeply and can't understand why his friends and family don't feel the same things he does. The Giver explains that they don't have the memories. They are not bad people, they just don't know differently. Only once before, when the Giver was training a new Receiver, things went terribly wrong. The 12 year old girl decided she didn't want the pain and responsibility of being the new Receiver and asked to be "released". When that happened, then whatever memories the Giver had given her were known suddenly and briefly by the society. That time of "discomfort" passed, and it was ten more years before they selected Jonas to be the new Receiver.

Jonas has accepted his fate and his responsibility, but is not happy that the entire society will never know the feelings he knows. He and the Receiver decide that the only way that can happen is if Jonas escapes from their community. Once gone, the society will experience the entire year's worth of memories that Jonas has accumulated. While everything is carefully planned out for the Giver to help Jonas escape, Jonas has to jump the gun and leave two weeks earlier than planned. He finds out what being "released" means. He sees video of the smaller of two newborn twins being "released"....the baby is injected with a needle and dies. He realizes that the society is killing unworthy babies and olders when they are no longer useful. When Jonas' father informs him that the next morning they will be "releasing" a one year old baby, Gabriel, who Jonas has helped take care of because he's just to difficult to handle, Jonas puts his plan into action early. He takes Gabriel and makes his escape. The ending is ambiguous, but Jonas and Gabriel finally make it to a land where they see animals for the first time. At the end of the book, though they are near starving and freezing to death, they see the lights of a cabin in the distance...the same cabin from the Christmas memory where Jonas learned about love and family. I choose to believe that Jonas and Gabriel made it there safely....and that the society was then flooded with all the memories that Jonas had been given, thus maybe giving them the knowledge to do things differently! I really enjoyed this book and think it's a great book for the kids to have on their middle school reading lists. :-)