You don't need to worry. There's no pain, no sadness.
You don't have to be responsible for your choices.
Because you don't get to choose anything.
Everything is already set and generously given to you
with much consideration of the Committee.
Is this Heaven? Or is this Hell?
Title: The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Other: First book of The Giver series. (4 books)
This novel set in the far future. After the world-devastating wars and disasters, people tried and succeed to make a place like Heaven, where there's no pain, no sadness. Or so they believed.
Everything is painstakingly prepared and pre-planned, and the Committee chose everything for people in order to make them live a happy life. Every family consisted of parents and two children. The Committee let children know what their future job would be, after years of thorough observations and tests. They even decided whom you should marry according to your ideal types and temperaments. They also provide place to live once you got married or became adult.
The main character of this book Jonas had become twelve. Twelve is very special age in this book. Because the Committee lets you know what your future job will be according to the thorough observation of the past 12 years. Then from now on you can start studying and receiving job-related trains. But Jonas was allotted a job he had never heard of before: The Receiver.
Source: Goodreads
In this society, they removed all the memories of the past - wars, famine, sadness, pain, emotions, etc. - in order to make a Heaven on Earth. Only the Receiver had all those memories. Just like a forbidden book that nobody couldn't read, the Receiver only had all the past and history of the human race. When the society met some problems, they would ask the Receiver how to handle them. As if they ask God to give them oracle.
The Receiver made a decision based on the memories of the past - history of the human race - and everyone accepted the decision without objection. For example, once people wanted to have three children in each family. So they asked the Receiver if it'd be okay. The Receiver could remember that once in the far past, there were so many people on earth and people suffered from famine. The petition for three children was denied. (Even though they didn't know why the Receiver denied the petition, they all accepted it.)
Now that the Receiver was old, he needed to find someone to give all his memories of the past, the history of human race. So he became the Giver, and Jonas was chosen as the Receiver.
As he was receiving and getting to know about history of the past, Jonas realized that the world he was living in lacked of many things. There is no pain nor sadness. They removed emotions altogether because people were suffering from them. Love was no exception. There is no feeling of love here that people can suffer from. There's no color. In the past, people discriminated each other and broke war all because of colors. So they killed the colors. There's no cold or hot weather. It's always the right temperature, the right sky because they control the weather. Hence no snow, no rain and no sunshine that could burn your skin.
Jonas found out that in order to make seemingly "Heaven-like" world they were living in, they got rid of more important things. And soon he would face an incident that could change his whole life.
To become the master of your own life is extremely thrilling,
and yet incredibly frightening.
If we didn't have emotions, would we live more fulfilled life? Are we really better off without love, which could cause severe pain? If someone made a decision for you after years and years of consideration, would it always lead to the best result? If you don't have to worry about anything at all, will it automatically make it Heaven on Earth?
Choice is always difficult, because we're not sure about our own choices. What if I chose wrong? What if my life turns unexpectedly because of my choice? To become the master of your own life is extremely thrilling, and yet incredibly frightening.
How wonderful it is that we have a choice.
How brave you are if you're willing to take responsibility for that choice.
The world of The Giver might sound like a gloomy dystopia, but this is a great book that makes us ponder upon our lives. It shows how wonderful it is to have a choice, and how brave it is to be responsible for that choice.
This is the first book of the series of four, but you don't need to read them all. This was not planned as a part of tetralogy in the first place. The author wrote this novel, and then later she created other three books that share the same background. Just this novel alone is a great book.
A Few Good Lines from the Book
1.
“We don’t dare to let people make choices of their own.”
“Not safe?” The Giver suggested.
“Definitely not safe,” Jonas said with certainty. “What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And choose wrong?
“Or what if,” he went on, almost laughing at the absurdity, “they chose their own jobs?”
“Frightening, isn’t it?” The Giver said.
Jonas chuckled. “Very frightening. I can’t even imagine it. We really have to protect people from wrong choices.”
“It’s safer.”
“Yes,” Jonas agreed. “Much safer.”
2.
People in this society don't feel pain at all. They use drug to get rid of it even before you can feel it. But Jonas who had to learn what "pain" is, had to endure it without medicine. When he found out that he was the only one who could feel this emotion, he became lonely.
They have never known pain, he thought. The realization made him feel desperately lonely, and he rubbed his throbbing leg.
3.
At dawn, the orderly, disciplined life he had always known would continue again, without him. The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without color, pain, or past.
4.
Once he had yearned for choice. Then, when he had had a choice, he had made the wrong one: the choice to leave. And now he was starving.
But if he had stayed…
His thoughts continued. If he had stayed, he would have starved in other ways. He would have lived a life hungry for feelings, for color, for love.
Disclaimer) There's only first part of the storyline in this review to introduce the book. No major spoiler included.
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