The Giver: Part 2

I apologize for my lack of post yesterday, I was at a family event and didn't get home or to my computer until after midnight, so I figured I'd give it until tonight when I was actually coherent to post my thoughts on part 2.

I'll start with some discussion questions to get us going, and we can move along from there with impressions of story, characters, or thoughts on the ending. Now that Jonas has realized how much the community is really lacking in feelings and experience, what is your impression of their lives? What about their casual attitude towards things like release, killing and disposing of people who in any way disrupt the order of their world? What about the memories the Giver gives to Jonas, the way he helps him to understand things like color (just imagine trying to describe color to someone who has never seen it, I wouldn't even know where to start) and various emotions. What did you think of the description of the word "love" as so generalized it has become obsolete? Finally, what about the ending? Did it live up to the rest of the book, or did it feel a little anticlimactic? Was Jonas dreaming, or dying, or did he actually stumble upon a sled waiting for him in a memory that was actually his own?

The Giver: Part 1

Let's go ahead and open up discussion for the first reading section of The Giver. I know most of us have read it before, but what were your initial impressions of the lives these people lead and the community to which they belong? What about their perceptions of things like emotions at this stage in the reading? More on that in the next section, but initially, what was the impression? How about the idea of children and parents not being related by blood, someone else evaluating you and choosing your future for you, including spouse, your job, where you live, and how you think? Basically, to begin with, I'd like to discuss all the aspects of this society that we've noticed and how well (or poorly) they function, and how they affect these people's lives. Then we can open it up from there and go on to Jonas and how his Ceremony of Twelve changes things for him within the society.

The Giver Reading Schedule

I've looked over my copy of The Giver, and as short as it is (180 pages in my edition)I think we can finish it in two weeks easily, and cut it very nearly in half, which actually works out well as far as the plot of the book. If everyone is willing to read this many pages, I'm thinking we could go through chapter 9, which I'm seeing as 70 pages in my copy. I can do this by the end of the week, but I don't know if that suits everyone else's schedule. How about we try to get it read by Sunday night, February 20th, and the second half by the following Sunday, the 27th? Let me know if this works, if we need to tweak it, and hope you guys enjoy! Some food for thought on the first section: pay attention to adjectives, or the lack thereof, and also to the rigidity of the society and the interactions of the people. How comfortable would you be living in such a society, and to what extent do you consider the lives these people lead fulfilling, or even humane?