The Giver- Literary Devices-->Endings

The ending in The Giver is ambiguous. This means that the author Louis Lowry allows the reader to interpret what they believe happens to the characters in the end of the novel. In the end of this novel, Jonas is running away from the community with the newborn, Gabe, who was to be released that morning. He does this with the idea of returning all the lost memories to the community where "The Giver on his return, would find the community in a state of confusion and panic. Confronted by a situation which they had never faced before, and having no memories from which to find either solace or wisdom, they would not know what to do and would seek his advice." (161)
Jonas finds himself facing his memories given to him by the Giver in real life. "...the bike fell to it's side. But Jonas's ankle was twisted, and his knees were scraped and raw, blood seeping through his trousers."(170). "Jonas remembered, suddenly and grimly, the time in his childhood when he had been chastised for misusing a word. The word had been "starving." You have never been starving, he had been told. You will never be starving. Now he was." (172). Jonas, in chapter 22 is experiencing real pain. Not pain in other peoples' memories given to him by the Giver, but real pain that he himself is actually enduring. He is going through things that he had been convinced would never, ever happen to him, such as starving. He comes to the conclusion that "if he had stayed, he would have starved in other ways. He would have lived a life hungry for feelings, for colour, for love."(173).
Jonas also experiences things that he enjoyed from the memories. "Terrified, he looked up, but it was not a plane at all. Though he had never seen one before, he identified it from his fading memories, for The Giver had given them to him often. It was a bird." (171). " After a life of Sameness and predictability, he was awed by the surprises that lay beyond each curve of the road. He slowed the bike again and again to look with wonder at the wildflowers, to enjoy the throaty warble of a new bird nearby, or merely to watch the way the wind shifted the leaves in the tree. During his twelve years in the community, he had never felt such simple moments of exquisite happiness." (171). Even though he is burdened with the weight of his own and Gabe's lives, he takes the time to stop and look around, take in all that he has been missing his entire life. Even though he is starving and bleeding, he is in no hurry to make it to Elsewheres.

So many people have the interpretation that Jonas and Gabe die at the end. They think that he is finding happiness because he's recalling all the wonderful memories of love and celebration and family. They believe he's becoming delusional as he slowly drifts into death. I believe differently. "But he began, suddenly, to feel happy. he began to recall happy times. he remembered his parents and his sister. He remembered his friends, Asher and Fiona. he remembered The Giver. Memories of joy flooded through him suddenly. He reached the place where the hill crested and he could feel the ground under his snow-covered feet become level. It would not be uphill anymore... But it was not a grasping of a thin and burdensome recollection; this one he could keep. It was a memory of his own." (177)

I believe that he went back to the community. I believe that he realized that even though his "family" and "friends" didn't ever actually "love" him, because they didn't know what love is, he felt that he loved them. He was attracted back to his community, where memories now existed because he had left. That is why there is snow on the ground. Before there wasn't any such thing as snow, but because he had released all his memories back into the community, there was now snow, lights, singing, and the celebration of love. Also, with research I found that in the sequels of The Giver, Gathering Blue, and The Messenger, Jonas and Gabriel make appearances. Appearances that you would have to actually read between the lines, think about the character, and decide that yes, this person is an adult version of Jonas/Gabe. Jonas shows up in the third book, The Messenger, as the leader, then also in Gathering Blue, the main character, Kira, sees a pale eyed boy. It could be either Jonas or Gabe. I really don't believe they die. I believe they come back to the same community, but it is no longer filled with Sameness, instead with feelings of love and memories.

The Giver- The Importance of Memory

With research i found that the author of The Giver, Lois Lowry, was inspired to write this novel after visiting her aging father, who had lost most of his long-term memory. She saw through him that without memory there is no pain. If someone does not remember physical pain, they might as well have not experienced it. If they had made a choice in their past to make their lives different in a negative way, and they no longer remember doing it, there is no pain inflicted from it any longer. You cannot be plagued by regret or grief without memory.


In the novel The Giver sometime in the past, the community decided to rid all pain from their lives by choosing sameness and discarding all memories to only one holder. All the experiences of a community had been transphered to one person, just so they could be relieved of all the pain that occured through human history. For example, the community had never experienced climate. There is no snow and no sun. Jonas experiences them through memories. This is only a small example though. "And the strongest memory that came was hunger. It came from many generations back. Centuries back. The population had become so big that hunger was everywhere. Excruciating hunger and starvation. It was followed by warfare." (pg. 111) This quote explains that without memory we do not know how to make choices that affect our future. Here, the Giver used this memory of starvation and hunger to decide whether or not families should be given a third child. He decided that they shouldn't because of over-population. "From the distance, Jonas could hear the thud of cannons. Overwhelmed by pain, he lay there in the fearsomne stench for hours, listened to the men and animals die, and learned what warfare meant." (pg. 120) This is what the Giver knew would happen if the community became over-populated.

This is why people learn about history in school. We must understand what the outcomes and consequences of certain decisions are. For example, in history we learn about the world wars. We learn about how countries allowed Hitler to do certain bad things because they didn't want to get involved, but while they did this, as "innocent" bystanders, they allowed something much worse to occur, WWII. Now this could relate to something on a much smaller scale, such as a school fight. Lets say a bunch of kids, "innocent" bystanders, just stand around and watch the fight. Well, that doesn't stop one of the kids in the fight from getting very badly injured. So because there are many factors that happened a long time ago, or as refered to as " back and back and back." in The Giver, memories can be very very important for decision making and not repeating the ugly truths of our past.

The Giver- Quotation about Lies

"Now Jonas had a thought that he had never had before. This new thought was frightening. What if others- adults- had, upon becoming Twelves, received in their instructions the same terrifying sentence?

What if they had all been instructed: You may lie?

His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness- and promised answers- he could, conceivably (though it was unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: "Do you lie?"

But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true." (pg. 71)

This quote at the very end of chapter 9 really stood out for me. I found it very intriguing that Jonas actually could pin point the fact that if everyone could lie, then himself and the rest of the people in his community, could be living amoung a society of lies. This triggers back to my blog about Individuality vs. Conformity, when I talked about Jonas being different from the rest of his community. When I talked about the blue eyes and how they had depth. Depth that could mean that he is more observant and has a different and better understanding than others.

But his understanding of the fact that he could be living a lie is true. He is living a lie, and he is only starting, a little bit, to understand this. His community is controlled completely, and everyone in it has chosen Sameness over individuality. A question that comes to mind when I read this quote is : Do other people in the community question whether or not people are telling the truth or not when they were given the ability to lie? I can not answer this question, because The Giver was written in third person to Jonas's point of view. All I can know is what he questions or what he is thinking. Jonas has been chosen to gain all the memories of the world and the past, so he obviously has been seen as a child who thinks differently than everyone else, and a child who thinks about the possiblies of more than what is seen.