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?
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There is opposition in all things, but in order to truly appreciate the good, you have to experience the bad, too.
After feeling pain, you truly appreciate the absence of it when you feel well.
After going days without eating, you truly appreciate the simple joy of food (yes, I'm speaking from personal experience when I couldn't eat for 3 weeks! That experience left its mark on me :) ).
After suffering from heartbreak do you come to find what love really means.
In Jonas' society, they've shut themselves off from feeling anything, and they're a numb society. The example of love being an obsolete emotion is very telling. While the society is organized in family units, they are artificially created families where parents "apply" for children, which only comes after they have "applied" and been granted spouses.
So, with the absence of choice is the absence of emotion. The lack of color and the lack of music contributes to this very bland society. Sure, it may function in some sort of fashion (we're not seeing war or civil revolts), but the people aren't truly living, either. They've forfeited that and given the burden of knowing what is missing to The Giver and now to Jonas.
The ending can be interpreted in a variety of ways. I can appreciate that it's vague to allow a variety of interpretation, but I don't really like the ending myself. The first time I read the book, I thought that Jonas had found a community that has rejected the tenets of his previous society. That would be a happy ending in a way, that he finds a place that is open to joy and happiness as well as the opposites of misery and sadness. I was hoping that a second read through would provide more insight, but unfortunately, my thoughts are leaning more toward Jonas and Gabriel dying in the snow. I hate that interpretation to indicate that I'm a pessimist because I don't feel that I am, but I think it's more the cynical side of me coming out because the ending kind of annoys me. :D I don't mind dramatic endings or symbolic endings, but to me, Lowry was reaching a little too far on this one and it just kind of irritates me. That said, I do enjoy the book very much and I think it has a very good message about life.
I think you're right that there's a balance to things. In order to appreciate, you need to be lacking, or perhaps be aware of lacking. These people are lacking real experience, and are unbalanced and empty, but content because they don't even know what they're missing. Someone who started this society must've known enough, though, not to let the memories die, or at least to know that their perfect little microcosm doesn't exist everywhere, because they decided to keep someone around who would know what to do on the rare occasions the outside world intervenes. They can't be completely ignorant besides the Giver, not all of them. I almost can't help but wonder if the whole community is like some sort of social experiment, and if there are people somehow observing the community, making notes on what works and what doesn't, tweaking the circumstances as necessary, or whatever. Reminds me of so many sci-fi plots...
Anyway, next thought: why do the people with the capacity to "see beyond" (whole separate curiosity is how that fits into anything, like a particular gene or something that makes them able to see through the "sameness") have blue eyes, and is that symbolic of something?
I dunno if you've heard about the...well, they're not sequels, but they're like companion novels, set in the same universe, with different characters. Jonas and Gabriel are mentioned in passing, so I don't think they actually die, but it's sort of hard to tell. Anyway, the two books that go along with this one are called Messenger and Gathering Blue. I don't remember liking them much, but I only read each one once, and it was a while ago, so maybe they're worth reading again. I also found the ending annoying, if only because it was so vague after all the lead up to it.
You could look at this as a utopian society. No pain. No war. No crime. Of course, the problem is that the only way to get this utopia was to take away free will. Perhaps saying that it was taken away is incorrect. You could say that people have chosen to give up their free will. However, that's not quite right either. These people have never known free will so they don't know that they've relinquished it.
It's disturbing on many levels. The foremost, at least to me, is the need to release anyone who doesn't quite fit in. We don't know what sort of amazing things Gabriel could contribute to this society because he would have been released. How many times have you heard a well-known, successful person say that they were a handful when they were a child?
The very fact that the society could function with only a few people actually thinking is surprising. What do people do all day? It's hard for me to imagine a place with no books and no music. No television, sunshine or rain. The environment is sterile and suffocating. And yet, people are capable of adapting. I think this is one of the things Lowry is saying. We could all live here if we didn't know anything else. Once you've been somewhere else, as Jonas was when he had been given memories, it's nearly impossible to go back. You have to wonder how the Giver himself could stand it.
Ah yes, the ending! The first time I read it I hated it. It was just way to ambiguous for me. However, I've met Lowry at a couple conferences that I've been to and she always meant for Jonas and Gabriel to live. If I remember correctly, she was surprised when she heard from so many people wondering about it. This time I enjoyed the ending but then I knew what it was. I checked out Gathering Blue and The Messenger so that I could read them again. I want to find out how all three books are connected. If I remember correctly that's much more clear in The Messenger than it is in Gathering Blue.
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