Daniel Willock

For all of you who have not read The Giver, by Lois Lowry, I highly recommend this book to read. For those who have read it I give my respect to them. This book is based on a theory of relativity or sameness. It takes place after many centuries have past when it was first adopted. It is a society of absolute sameness where rarely an unforeseen event occurs. Where their land is flat and everything is a shade of black and white. In this case the color black would represent the unknown or unseen
Jonas is the main character of this story. He goes through a so-called hero’s journey. Jonas starts his journey when he attends the ceremony of twelve. At this ceremony of twelve there is a procedure that a child goes through to determine his or her job. It is a cycle or the unity of their community. Jonas however, is skipped over and did not receive his title. He is in the threshold when everyone at the ceremony realizes at the ceremony realizes that Jonas has been skipped over. He believes that they had forgotten him and that his job maybe worse than any other job. He starts his decent when at the end of the ceremony the announcer states that she is sorry for the anxiety and focuses on Jonas. She tells the crowd that she has skipped Jonas for a very special reason. That he had been chosen to be the next receiver of dreams. This certain job was held as the highest honor. The receiver would receive memories of the past and was to counsel on tasks of great confusion to the community.
On the first day of his assignment Jonas was supposed to show up to a room behind the house of the old, which is a relatively large house. This room could be thought of as the abyss. The doors had locks on them, which was very unusual to him because there were hardly any locks on doors. This room puzzled him because when he was let in, there was a desk in the middle of it. On the right of this desk was another door with locks as well. The person at the desk requested permission to send Jonas in. when Jonas entered the room he was astonished to see a little screen in the corner of the room towards the ceiling with a speaker under it, as well as a little bed in the corner and shelf after shelf after shelf full of books. This is where his mentor lives out his lives. His mentor is the Giver of dreams. The giver mentors him on how to deal with the dreams and memories that he receives from him. The giver is aged in looks but not in actual age. The burden of all the memories has filled him with stress, pain, and anguish. Jonas begins to transform mentally and starts to put more thought into his dreams and thoughts. Jonas soon realizes that the way things are ran in his society is different and wrong from how they used to be decades before, he takes the initiative and decides that he would try to escape the unpleasant world lives in. one night he decides to leave and take a baby with him, named Gabe, who the society was going to release or put to death in a manor of speaking.
He returns to the place where his memories remind him of. Some think he finds a city where sameness doesn’t rule. Personally I believe that at the end of the journey he returns to where all others who seek the impossible and succeed in their own way. He returns to the memories in which he believed in so much. His journey ends with his death; seeking something that may no longer exist. Jonas reminds us that we need to hold onto our beliefs until the very end. That we should follow what we believe is truly right and pure. To also deal with the difficulties along the way.