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Dystopia for children: Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993)

by Karyn Huenemann
18 Jan. 2004

In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the young reader is shown through words, not images, the functioning of a futuristic society.
I want to begin my discussion of The Giver with a contextualization of the novel.
Lois Lowry is famous for a lot more than just The Giver… notably her Anastasia Krupkik novels, and other children’s (not YA) texts. She has also illustrated two novels–interestingly The Secret Garden and Pollyanna–and written a number of articles and a non-fiction book (a description of Kennebunktport, MN).
From her website:

With the 2004 publication of Messenger, the trilogy that begins with The Giver is complete. Jonas and Kira are grown, and have met, at last. Of course every good book leaves one wondering, and the conclusion of the trilogy will, as well.
The Giver: At the age of twelve, Jonas, a young boy from a seemingly utopian, futuristic world, is singled out to receive special training from The Giver, who alone holds the memories of the true joys and pain of life.
Gathering Blue: In this speculation on the nature of the future of human society, life in Kira’s community is nasty, brutish, and, for the ill or disabled, short.
Messenger: In this novel that unites characters from “The Giver” and “Gathering Blue,” Matty, a young member of a utopian community that values honesty, conceals an emerging healing power that he cannot explain or understand.

Her full bibliography is too extensive to list here… it is on her website, which I have linked to our course website.
Lowry comments that the texts in her trilogy “take place against the background of very different cultures and times. Though all three are broader in scope than my earlier books, they nonetheless speak to the same concern: the vital need of people to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment.”
They are perhaps the strongest narrative assertion of Lowry’s stance against war–her son, a fighter pilot in the US Air Force, was killed in a warplane:

“His death [...] tore away a piece of my world. But it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth. [...] I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another.” (Lowry, “Biography”)

Lois Lowry as an author is quite aware of her position in regards to children as readers, and is one of the more consciously responsible authors of children’s literature around these days (which is perhaps unfair… there are a lot, but there are also those who are not conscientious about what they produce…)

The Giver and the censors

We need to have another little piece of information added to our discussion of The Giver before we begin to look at the text, and that is its publication and reception history.
The Giver was the 14^th most frequently banned book in the United States for the years 1990-2000 (ALA), 11^th for the years 1990-1999.
This is for a number of reasons, and has certainly raised its profile within school and library communities, where most children of the readers’ ages source their texts.
So let’s consider censorship and challenges, and how they relate to the issues that we are considering in this class.
Among (of course) other challenges and censorings, The Giver was challenged in Ohio in 1999 because “it’s themes were too mature [as it] contains graphic descriptions and discusses topics like suicide, sexuality, and euthanasia,” and it was “removed from reading lists in Lake Butler (Florida)” in 1999 when a parent “said the book’s discussion of infanticide and sexual awakening made it inappropriate for students” (Foerstel 250)
Despite this, The Giver is also a multiple-award-winning book:

o  Winner 1994 – Newbery Medal Winner
o  Winner 1994 – ALA Best Books for Young Adults
o  Winner 1994 – ALA Notable Children’s Book
o  Winner – New Jersey Garden State Teen Book Award
o  Winner 1995 – Virginia Young Readers Program Award
o  Winner 1996 – Illinois Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Award
o  Winner 1996 – Kansas William White Award
o  Winner 1995 – Kentucky Bluegrass Master List
o  Winner 1994 – Maine Student Book Award (“Teens”)

So what is the issue, then, do you really think?
Censorship is in some ways like the production of dystopias: it reveals the underlying fears of a society.
To back up a bit, the motivation, I contend, for the increase in the number of dystopias recently is the increased fear of technology, of progress, of the fast rate of change that many individuals are unable to completely comprehend, never mind keep up with.
In a similar way, Lowry’s text speaks to exactly those fears that adults don’t want their children to understand–yet, they say, but is it really ever?
At what point do we let children understand issues in their world? This is a source of conflict in the literary and educational worlds.
Obviously Shaun Tan and Lois Lowry feel, as I do, that revealing issues to children as early as they are able to understand–or to question–is appropriate. But this is why children’s texts such as The Giver–texts that cause children to question the social structures that surround them–get challenged and removed from libraries and schools.

About the text

I want to begin with a series of questions that you can discuss amongst yourselves, and then in a class forum:

o   What age group do you think The Giver is aimed at?
o   And what are children doing at this point in their lives? what are they talking about, what are they learning in school?
o   What issues does The Giver raise?
o   How important are these specific issues in our society?
o   What secondary issues does the text raise?

Let’s look at the text

First, I would like to say that having read the test closely last night, I just can’t get to a place where the Giver’s laying-on of hands takes on a sexual meaning. As I read it–and of course my own age, and social and religious upbringing, influence this reading of the situation–it is a far more spiritual, mystic connection, like the laying-on-of-hands, as I have said.
I think Suzette had a point when she mentioned that those of us who were raised with touch being a positive, welcome connection between adults and children–even outside of family connections–must necessarily interpret these scenes differently. Reading them again, I am not sure that Lowry herself would have seen them as problematic, any more than the “Stirrings” could be predicted as being too explicit a reference to sexual development.

To move on…

A good synopsis of the plot is provided by Dennis Sumara:

“The Giver depicts a futuristic society where all historical and cultural memory is concealed from all citizens except one–the Receiver of Memories. Because it is understood that there are times when knowledge of history is necessary for appropriate decision-making, the Receiver functions as the main advisor for government. The plot of the story is developed around the apprenticeship of Jonas, the newly appointed Receiver. As part of his learning process, Jonas receives memories from the aging Receiver. As Jonas receives these memories, he comes to understand himself and his community differently. He learns, for example, that while his father is called Nurturer of Babies he is also responsible for the euthanasia of children deemed abnormal or otherwise unacceptable. Through the transmission of memories of past wars and of sleigh rides, Jonas learns that the present is better understood when it is interpreted in relation to the past.” (166)

But what is happening in the text, what are the issues addressed?

o   euthanasia
o   social control
o   the individual versus the collective good
o   memory and its power in the hands of the individual
o   the need of a collective past to empower a society of individuals
o   others?

And what does this mean in the context of utopian literature for children? What does the child reader learn about society from the novel?
The overt dystopic message is that too great a price can be paid for fitting in.
On a deeper level, what is the child reader learning about his or her place within our society from this text, and how do the two questions and answers relate?
The child–always wanting to fit into the society in which he or she is raised–can learn from this that individuality is positive.
What is this text doing for the child reader?
Lowry sets up a beautiful dichotomy between childhood and adulthood in this novel, as described by Don Latham in “Childhood Under Siege.”
He notes that the protection of children–of childhood–is a historical construct that is a the moment–aided by authors such as Lowry–”under siege,” that the notion of children as needing protection, is not always accepted by society today, nor should it be:
George Bodmer summarizes it nicely, albeit in another context: “… childhood is a gift that we give to children. … Part of our granting them childhood is our notion of protecting them from certain ‘frightening truths’; we try to control the message of that which we give them” (137). Jenkins elaborates on this view, which he considers to be unrealistic, limiting, and oppressive:

“Too often, our culture imagines childhood as a utopian space, separate from adult cares and worries, free from sexuality, outside social divisions, closer to nature and the primitive world, more fluid in its identity and its access to the realms of the imagination, beyond historical change, more just, pure, and innocent, and in the end, waiting to be corrupted or protected by adults.” (3-4)

However, another view of childhood has begun to gain credence, one that Eliza Dresang describes as “the-child-as-capable-and-seeking-connection” (Radical Change 57). Such a view sees children as “capably self-reliant, fiercely independent, curious, interactive, and ‘multi-tasking’” (Dresang and McClelland 162). (Latham 2-3)
Latham continues, pointing out the relationship underlying interactions between adults and children in The Giver:

“In this community of clearly demarcated stages of development and rigidly defined roles, children apparently learn a very adult lesson early on: there is considerable incongruity between what actually occurs and what might be desired. [...] On the other hand, everyone in this community is treated as, and in many ways responds like, a child. As Barbara Lehman and Patricia Cook point out, “In The Giver, society itself has been ‘perfected’ as an extended, idealized childhood” (71). Presumably in the name of protecting people from themselves and from the possibility of making bad choices (73), this community has long ago relinquished any claim to free choice and individuality. Adults are no different from the children in that they blindly accept the roles prescribed for them.” (Latham 9)

For the child reader, this reversal is empowering, and if you take (or have taken) my children’s lit course, you will learn (or will have learned) that a significant degree of what renders a children’s text successful–for the child reader–is that sense of empowerment.
Jonas learns the true cost of the comfortable life that his society leads, and is unwilling, on his own part, to continue to pay that price.
The Giver, the only adult able to understand his position, agrees but is not in himself strong enough–has never been strong enough, even as he watched his daughter commit a form of suicide–to change the social structure.
Lowry’s books–all three in this trilogy–present child (will, adolescent) protagonists who are strong enough to take on the responsibilities that the adults in their society are unable or unwilling to assume. Therein lies their power as fictional role-models.
So The Giver, then, is both empowering child readers within our society, and giving them a warning about a possible future that is the logical, if hyperbolic–extension of the sense of conformity that society (or in a more temporally specific way, their peers) often tries to push upon them–us all.
While it is a simple, and standard utopian message, appearing in a number of texts and movies, although names escape me as I write this, it is appropriate for the age group of the intended audience (which the publisher suggests is grade 6–that is 11–and up).

Works Cited

ALA. “The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999.” American Library Association (ALA). Web. 1 Feb. 2007.

ALA. “The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000.” American Library Association (ALA). Web. 1 Feb. 2007.

Foerstel, Herbert N. Banned in the USA: A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries. Rev. ed. Westport, CN: Greenwood, 2002. Print.

Gross, Melissa. “The Giver and Shade’s Children: Future Views of Child Abandonment and Murder.” Children’s Literature in Education 30.2 (1999): 103-17. Academic Search Elite. Web. 25 Jan. 2007.

Latham, Don. “Childhood Under Siege: Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars and The Giver.” The Lion and the Unicorn 26.1 (2002): 1-15. Project Muse.Web . 1 Feb. 2007.

Latham, Don. “Discipline and Its Discontents: A Foucauldian Reading of The Giver.” Children’s Literature 32 (2004): 134-51. Project Muse. Web. 4 Jan. 2005.

Lowry, Lois. “Biography.” Lois Lowry’s website. 2002. Web. 24 Jan. 2007.

Lowry, Lois. Lois Lowry’s website. 2002. Web. 24 Jan. 2007.

Sumara, Dennis J. “Learning to Create Insight: Literary Engagements as Purposeful Pedagogy.” Changing English: Studies in Reading & Culture 8.2 (2001): 165-75. Academic Search Elite. Web. 25 Jan. 2007.

“Teens@Random.” Random House Children’s Books. Web. 1 Feb. 2007.

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