Meeting The Giver

Giving Memories

After Jonas has received his assignment as a Receivers Successor, he goes meet the Receiver. But first, he recieves the rules for his assignments... and they are not ordinary. The most shocking rule he has is that... he CAN lie. After he reads all the rules, he goes to the Annex, the place in which is were the Receiver waits for him. Once there, he realizes some things are different.  First of all, there were thousand of books in that "dwelling" (is their way of calling houses).  Also, the Receivers door has a lock, which none of the other dwellings have (because there can be no privacy in the community). Once there, the Receiver shares a memory with him, actually, he transfer 3 memories into Jonas. One is snow, another is sunshine, and sunburn. Then, the Receiver explains that every time he shares a memory, he actually forgets that memory, and it is one less burden. After explaining that, he tells Jonas that he will now be the Receiver, and that now Jonas should call him "The Giver".

Shocking Moments

"Finally he steeled himself to read the final rule again. He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie."

Jonas has never lied, and he had never felt the need to. But now, with these new rules, he can. This specific rule will change his whole way of living... Now he can skip his dreamtelling ritual in the morning (because he can lie about it), he can lie at his night ritual, he can hide things from his family, and also he doesnt have to always say the truth when he talks to other people. Even though this gives him freedom, I think that on a certain point of this story, this rule will cause conflict.

"But the old man laughed "All I gave you was one ride, on one sled, in one snow, on one hill. I have a whole world of them in my memory. I could give them to you one by one a thousand times, and there would still be more. '"

The Giver actually has the memories from all times.... The good ones AND the bad ones. If Jonas has suffered because of just a sunburn, the Giver should be like on intense pain, he has the memory of all problems humanity has passed through. And the worst part is that Jonas will have to receive all of those memories too.

Final thoughts...

I predict that Jonas will aquire a lot of wisdom, but also pain. He will see things from the past and he will have the need to talk about them with ordinary people, and that will cause trouble as the previous Receivers successor caused. Also I think that he will start feeling different than the rest of his Community, and that is going to lead to internal conflict.