Book Review Saturday – ‘The Giver’

The Giver is a book I should have read years ago.

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I wish I’d had this book as a younger person. Reading it as an adult is, I’m sure, better than nothing – but reading it as a teen (which I was in 1993, when it was first published) would have been fantastic.

But then, everything happens as it must.

The Giver is a masterclass in world-building. As we read the book, realities about the world that Lowry creates come effortlessly (on our part, at least) to the fore. She expertly paints a world which is recognisable, but very different from ours – and the means by which she gradually reveals it are magnificent. I won’t say more for fear of spoilers (though I’m sure a lot of you will have read this book already!), but suffice it to say that I was impressed.

The novel tells the story of Jonas, who is preparing to ‘become a Twelve’, which means he will no longer be considered a child in his community but will be bestowed with the societal role he will bear for the rest of his adult life. He will enter training, he will socialise for the most part with his fellow trainees, and the gradual process of splitting away from his ‘family’ will begin. He lives with his parents and his younger sister Lily, who is about to become an Eight. She, too, is facing her own milestones of development – her ‘comfort object’ (a stuffed elephant) will be removed when she becomes an Eight, and she will be given – for the first time in her life – a jacket with small pockets to symbolise her growing maturity and the fact that she is now trusted to look after her own small trinkets. Nobody has ‘birthdays’; a ceremony held every December marks a child’s changing from a Three to a Four, or a Seven to an Eight or, most significantly, an Eleven to a Twelve.

Jonas’ community knows no pain, nor hunger, nor suffering, nor strife. Everyone has a role, to which they are suited. Everyone serves. Everyone is exactly the same. Everyone takes pills from the onset of adolescence – including Jonas, early in the book – to counteract what is referred to as Stirrings, and which can be understood as nascent hints of sexuality; I preferred to think of the pills as emotional anaesthetics.

The community, which initially seemed such a Utopia, slowly reveals its darker face.

The Giver meets the Receiver. Image: 7bbs.edublog.org

During the ceremony in which Jonas becomes a Twelve, the leader of the community calls each child in turn and gives them the role they will fulfil for the rest of their lives. When she comes to Jonas, she skips him – and the disconcerting effect is felt by everyone. At the ceremony’s end, the leader brings Jonas before his people and tells him that he has been designated as the new Receiver of Memory, a role which has remained empty since a failed successor was appointed ten years before. Nobody wants to discuss this failure: it seems to cause great pain and discomfort, and the topic is avoided. Jonas is afraid, and unsure of what is facing him. All the other children have had experience of the roles they will now be fulfilling, and they don’t have to deal with the unknown as he must.

He reports for duty and finds the current Receiver of Memory – an aged man, working alone, with shelves filled with books and the ability to switch off the surveillance which all other citizens are subject to – and he begins to understand the scope of the task facing him. Now that Jonas has become the new Receiver of Memory, the old Receiver becomes the Giver – and giving memories is exactly what he does.

Jonas gradually learns, with the help of the Giver and his own natural abilities, that all is not well in his world. He begins to see and feel and think things which are unacceptable, and the inner struggle this creates is expertly expressed. Jonas begins to see everyone – his parents included, most particularly his father – in a strange and terrifying new light, and the truths behind his life, and that of his community, which have never been faced up to before, begin to torment him.

I have rarely read a book which deals with huge universal themes (morality, good and evil, authority structures and power) as expertly as it does with the quieter, more personal themes of growing up; certainly, I don’t think I’ve read a better one than The Giver. It’s really hard to review it without giving away all the community’s secrets, and without spoiling the gradual way in which Lowry builds not only her world but also Jonas’ growing knowledge of it, but all I can say is that it is reminiscent of the learning process itself, the gradual changing from ignorance to knowledge. Some of it happens in chunks, and more of it happens gradually, just as it is for Jonas in this story. The book’s conclusion was, I felt, perfect – though my frustration at its ambiguity was tempered when I learned that sequels exist. However, even as it stands, I think The Giver is a monumental work. I can understand why it creates such controversy, and why it has been challenged and banned in schools; because I understand it, however, does not mean that I agree.

The Giver is a book that made me think. That is what the best literature is supposed to do. Anything less – anything which coddles us into believing our own perfect little Utopia is eternal, never-changing, safe and unassailable – is what needs to be challenged, to my mind.

I’m grateful for The Giver. It will live beside Ursula le Guin and Madeleine l’Engle on my bookshelves, and I hope I will always remember its message.

Starship Utopia

I’d better begin today’s blog post with a small disclaimer: I’m not a real Trekkie.

I don’t understand each tiny detail of every series; I haven’t watched every single episode and forensically dissected all the movies; I have a favourite Captain of the Enterprise (sort of), but my loyalty wavers; I don’t fully understand who or what the Borg is, and I quite like Wesley Crusher – that last one alone would be enough to discount me from Star Trek fan-club membership, in some circles.

Actually, I think the whole Wesley Crusher thing can be put down to the fact that I watched most of ‘Star Trek: Next Generation’ at a certain age. It had nothing to do with the character, as such. Apparently, some people found him rather annoying. I didn’t really notice that part.

Hello, sailor…
Image: comicvine.com

Anyway.

Yesterday evening, I watched ‘Star Trek: First Contact’, a film I first watched years ago, but which I’d forgotten just enough of to make a second viewing enjoyable. (Sometimes, having an imperfect memory can be a wonderful thing.) ‘First Contact’ is widely considered to be one of the best Star Trek movies, and – to be honest – not only do I agree with this assessment, but I realised as I watched it that I needed to see it, right at this particular point in my life. I read a news report at the weekend, you see, one which filled me with horror about the future of humanity and which left me with a dreadful sense of foreboding as to where the planet is going and what may happen to it, so much so that I spent yesterday writing an utterly depressing dystopian short story – but ‘First Contact’ has given me a fresh perspective.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the future turned out to be just like it’s depicted in Star Trek? I think so.

I’d love to be part of a world where genuine idealism and selfless concern for life – all forms of it (except, maybe, the Borg) – drove the wheels of society and innovation; I’d love to be part of a world where there is equality between genders and races (except, again, for the Borg, but that’s mainly their own fault, to be fair); I’d love to live in a reality where things like capitalism and commerce and colonialism and environmental horror and overcrowding and lack of resources have all been dealt with and overcome. I’d love to wake up tomorrow and for all that to be real.

Unfortunately, the reality is more likely to be something along the lines of what I read about in the news report I mentioned above: too many people all trying to live on one overcrowded, under-resourced planet; survival of the fittest, in the worst sense of the phrase; desperate competition for dwindling supplies of everything necessary for sustaining life; rising temperatures and climate migration and permanent damage to the ecosystem. I can imagine all this happening – I can actually see it starting already. It’s much easier to imagine this than it is to imagine all the races of the universe living in harmony, warping between star systems in an attempt to bring peace to the cosmos, and all that jazz. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed ‘First Contact’ so much – it shows such a positive view of the possible future of humanity. It’s a break from the constant stream of dystopia that seems to be all over the place – in books, in movies, on TV shows – and, though it shows a Utopia which is so far away that none of us will live to see it, we can nevertheless feel confident of bequeathing it to our descendants. How hard would you work and how long would you strive to bring forth a wonderful, peaceful, clean world for your children and grandchildren if you knew, for certain, it could be achieved? Maybe it’s just me being an idealist, but I know I’d work pretty hard.

Perhaps that’s what we need, you know. A positive message. It’s all too easy to live down to expectation – if all the images of our future as a species and a planet show us devouring one another just to stay alive, then that’s how we start to think about ourselves. It becomes difficult to envisage a different future, a different set of choices. Pretty soon, the imagining becomes the reality, and we end up fulfilling the dark visions of the past. A positive view of what humanity may be capable of, however, may be far more useful – something to strive for, instead of fall back on. If we reflect ourselves succeeding instead of failing, perhaps it will start to become the truth.

But of course I know the visions and dreams of the average person have very little to do with the shaping of an entire planet, or culture, or people. That’s just not how it works. Unless there’s a payday in it for the most powerful, nothing will ever get achieved. As well as that, once we’ve started going down this road, the road which rewards greed and corruption and secret dealings done in small groups which affect millions of lives, it’s hard to get back from it. I don’t want to think that it’s already too late, but changing course is very difficult.

And, yes, I’m also fully aware that ‘Star Trek’ is fictional, and not only that but as unlikely a fiction as you’re ever going to get; that doesn’t stop me from wishing, passionately, that it will one day be the truth, and that we as a species will not destroy one another, but instead learn to live compassionately and gently, however.

A gal can dream, right?

Live long, and prosper.
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