Talk:The Giver

Sequels

hmmm...thenetblob sees the lack of the other two novels in this 'series'

perhaps someone should write an article on 'Gathering Blue' and 'Messenger'??????????? thenetblob

Sorry, but I JUST realized we had a copy of 'Messenger' in the library at work, and I didn't know about 'Gathering Blue', but I shal have to seek it out, then see what I can come up with. Weaponofmassinstruction 05:05, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've created stubs for the two "sequels"; Gathering Blue also has a scan of the cover. (You may notice that the cover image on this page is slightly less fuzzy, too.) I don't have a copy of Messenger at hand—the copy I read was the one I gave my mother for Xmas. Consequently, I feel much less confident writing about it, so that job is up to someone else. My feeling is that there will be less to work with for these two books, partly because The Giver has been around longer and has been banned in more places. Anville 01:27, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Peer Reviewed - Spoilers?

First, let me say I think it's a damn fine article, and worthy of attention. Second, I'm a bit leery about giving away a bit too much of the major detail as spoilers. You didn't do it overtly, and it makes sense for somebody who has read the book several times, but alluding to 'release' the way it stands now and the links to euthanasia etc at the bottom could lead some readers to figgure out the BEST plot twists that they wouldn't be aware of had they not read the book.

I'm not suggesting that the information given be changed, but I think a fair warning of 'spoilers' fairly early in the article should be given.

Great write, to all major and minor contributors!!! Weaponofmassinstruction 05:12, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

While I think it's only cricket to expect spoilers in a section entitled "Plot summary", it's also true that the later sections in this particular article harbor a few as well. Therefore, I've added a spoiler notice immediately before the table of contents.

Thanks for your time, your comments and your approval! Anville 21:39, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Glad to be of help. Weaponofmassinstruction 04:35, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cover images and references

I've added an image of the Bantam Books 1999 paperback edition, which I screenshot off Amazon.com. A discussion thread on some web site I stumbled across mentioned a third, different cover design; anybody know about it?

Also, I've categorized the "Readings and references" list and added a spate of articles I found via Lexis-Nexis. (An academic subscription to which is one of the better things my tuition money gets me, in addition to discount movie tickets.) Some of the articles may be accessible online, but I believe subscriptions are necessary and cost money.

Anville 15:46, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Trying out a new reference style, which I first saw on The Sirens of Titan. It's fun. Anville 19:45, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

A factual question

I wondered about the last bit of this first-paragraph sentence: "Jonas is selected to inherit the position of "Receiver of Memory", the man who stores all the memories of the time before Sameness, in case they are ever needed." It has been a while since I read the book, but I thought that the memories were secreted away so that the rest of the population wouldn't have to feel or deal with the pain they included, rather than because they might be needed later. Am I missing something? Totoro 05:14, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The Committee of Elders calls upon the Receiver when they need the wisdom the memories provide. The Giver tells Jonas about two examples, once when the Committee considered increasing the population and once when an errant jet pilot flew over the Community by mistake. The memories are kept because the Elders know they will need the wisdom from time to time, but they are restricted to one individual, the Receiver, to protect the citizens from the pain memories cause.

I thought the phrasing was clear enough, but if it's not, I welcome modifications. Anville 20:54, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Alledged attack on Utopianism

Did some people suggest the book was outrightly attacking utopianism? Perhaps even political? Colipon+(T) 05:33, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Lois Lowry?! POLITICAL?  ;)

A little less emotionally, we are indeed in troubled times if we accuse Lois Lowry of politics for -- ! -- attacking "utopianism"?! What the hell is "utopianism"? --VKokielov 05:59, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Some have alledged North Korea is moving towards a Giver-like society. I don't know. It's probably crazy people with their crazy theories. Colipon+(T) 01:18, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

You don't have to be crazy to see the parallel. If you're looking for Sameness look no further than Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle. Carolynparrishfan 22:15, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

It is a book with a philosophical outlook evaluating what happiness truly is, etc. etc. and evaluates attempts to attain it, and philosophy affects politics. But I don't think it was written with an ulterior motive in mind. -- Natalinasmpf 01:33, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Probability

Is the rather long section about the probability of having exactly 25 female and 25 male children out of 50 births each year really necessary? I don't see it adding anything to the article. -Parallel or Together? 01:32, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Back during the FAC process, I was told the article needed more information on how different teachers used the book. While researching this, I was impressed by the variety I found; certainly, I would never have thought to use this book for a probability lesson. Since the details of the math were available online, but only for a paying market, I decided to cook up a free version of the same discussion.

It adds what I was told to add. If anybody feels they don't need to know about it (which is certainly the reader's prerogative), they're welcome to scroll past it. [wink] Anville 10:31, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I just felt it was out of place, but I didn't scroll past it. I read it. Definitely an interesting way of using the book... -Parallel or Together? 10:57, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It was a nice section, but very out of place. I think it should be removed. Miai 12:13, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Another agreeing voice here. It's well written, but far more appropriate for an article on probability and mathematics. All of this information could be summed up in three or four sentences for the purposes of this lterary article. Dayv 13:43, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I also think it is too long/detailed. And why would a society which used infanticide to a flawed genetic engineering process to achieve population balance. Surely a few extra Releases would do it. Rmhermen 19:30, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, I went ahead and removed the largest part of it. If anyone cares to sum the contents of what I removed up in a way that would be consistent with the rest of the article, that would be great. I just thought it would be better idea to remove it and possibly insert that content again later, rather than having it take up such a large part of the article during its brief period of fame as a featured article. Miai 01:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

What about saying, "Given the normal ~50% chance of any child being a boy, there is actually only an ~11% chance that fifty births would yield 25 boys and 25 girls. Therefore it seems likely that the society uses genetic engineering to manipulate the sex of each upcoming baby and/or Releases some newborns in order to maintain the perfectly equal ratio." It'd be nice just to mention it somehow. Superm401 | Talk 13:32, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

When we read The Giver, our science teacher taught us how people can artifially create "designer babies". Since our english teacher liked to tease people, she gave the impression that our science teacher was going to give us "The Talk" (eek!). Anyways, that would probably be a better example of using the book in other subjects. ~Kate (I'm too lazy to log in)

More spoilers

How did this become a FAC with so many spoilers in the introduction? I won't comment further, because it is plainly impractical to read the article and then hope to read the book, which it does persuade me to do. Septentrionalis 03:30, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

You seem to be confusing 'spoiler' with plot information. A spoiler is something that gives away the ending, or some unpredictable twist in the plot (it "spoils" it). Giving general plot is most definitely not the same thing; it doesn't spoil the work. →Raul654 07:00, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Notes are screwed

The notes are screwed. There is no point adding a numbered reference if you aren't going to have a corresponding numbered note. Try printing this high-quality article and you'll soon see the problem that there is with non-interactive media like the printed page. - 203.134.166.99 03:32, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I'm changing it to normal footnotes. Superm401 | Talk 19:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Lowry's Inspiration

About a year ago I heard Lois Lowry speak at a local college, and someone asked her where she got the idea for the giver and she gave a completely different answer than the one mentioned here! She told us that she'd first gotten the idea for the novel when visiting her parents at a nursing home, where her father was suffering from memory loss and her mother still had perfect memory. Essentially Lowry's mother was grieving over a deceased relative but her father was perfectly cheery as he did not remember the deceased relative at all, which got Lowry to begin thinking about memory, the final result of which is The Giver. She also confirmed at the time that Jonas is indeed mentioned in Gathering Blue, but only kids seem to notice him. Andromeda321 03:33, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

That story is also in the speeches the article currently cites. I chose to write about the Carl Nelson bit because, after all, he's the guy on the cover, and in my estimation, that makes his story a notch more important to discuss. In other words, I picked the topic which had the most "scholarly interest", in my estimation. I'd welcome a good paraphrase of the story you mention, of course. Anville 10:26, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced remark

In addition, some literary scholars have questioned the originality of the novel, citing similarites with Ayn Rand's novella, "Anthem", which is in turn seen by other literary scholars as remarkably similar to Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.

Source, please? I don't doubt that somebody has said this — it's the sort of thing "literary scholars" are paid to say — but unless I overlooked it, the source isn,t in this article's bibliography. Anville 10:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

At some point, every dystopian novel has to be accused of ripping off Zamyain. It's a rule, apparently. Dayv 13:45, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

There are parallels, though, that are unmistakeable. Not so much in terms of specifics (the two cultures control human sexuality in distinctly different ways, for instance), as in the underlying philosophy of a Community that so extensively promotes the collective needs over the individual member. Has someone ever asked Lowry (more to the point, in a forum where this would go on record so her answer could be cited as a source for this article)?

Also, is anyone as struck as I am by the possibility that Lowry might have read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" at some point? Jonas, after all, literally walks away from his Community at the end, toward the mountains, just like the title characters of the Le Guin story. Has anyone ever asked Lowry about this?

When I was student-teaching this novel last fall, I gave my cooperating teacher a copy of the story with the suggestion that we could use it as a preread to set up the novel. She was intrigued by the idea but ultimately nixed it because she didn't think the class (ninth graders) were mature enough to handle the (mild) sex and drug references in the story without degenerating into a giggle fest.

On a side note, another controvery that might be worth including is what age to teach it at, if you could find sources. There's a feeling among some secondary-school English teachers that it's used too much and taught at too early an age. Some districts teach it at sixth-grade level, and that's where you get the kids having problems (particularly with the euthanasia scene) and the parent complaints and requests to remove it from curricula. You also get some instances where it's taught in both middle school and high school in the same district, often without the two schools being aware (this happened in the district where I was, too). Daniel Case 19:44, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, when I saw her speak I did ask her if there was a connection to Anthem because there's a comment in the book about a very intelligent person becoming a garbageman and running away from the society as a result. Lowry's response was she never read Anthem, though she did read The Fountainhead in college, but a lot of people ask her if there's a connection. Andromeda321 15:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Heh. Lowry went to college in the mid-fifties, didn't she? And what college student in that era didn't read The Fountainhead, or at least enough to fake it?

If the garbageman story is the only connection, I'd have to say that the link is so tenuous as to be forgettable. Without The Giver in front of me, I have to paraphrase from memory, but that story appears when Jonas, Asher and company are having lunch just before the Ceremony of Twelve. "I heard about a man who was absolutely certain he would be assigned Engineer," says Asher, "and the Committee gave him Sanitation Laborer. He jumped in the river, swam away and joined the first community he came across."

"Oh, come on," says Jonas. "They tell that story every year. My father says he heard it when he was an Eleven."

"It's true, though," protests Asher stubbornly. "If you don't like your Assignment, you can apply for Release and go Elsewhere. It's in the rules."

And that's the end of that. The main point, I believe, is to set up why it's unusual that Jonas can't apply for Release. It also allows Lowry to get in a little joke about Asher's inability to swim and his imprecision of language. What's more, little exchanges like this sketch in the children's characters: that is the sort of story passed down about coming-of-age ceremonies, whispered from one generation to the next. I heard legends like that right the way through college, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I find it entirely plausible that Lowry invented this passage (and others like it) by listening and recalling the way children actually speak. By Occam's Razor, then, we need not suppose it to be a case of literary influence, allusion or anything like that.

I'm surprised, really, that people bring up a little incident like the garbageman story to try and connect The Giver with The Fountainhead or with Objectivism in general. I mean, superficially speaking, doesn't the Community just sound like the place an Objectivist would hate? No room for individuality, no sex, no way to hear So-and-So's Fifth Kazoo Concerto? On a very trivial level, one could make the case that The Giver is an Objectivist novel, just on its thematic content.

Note that I say, "on a very trivial level". Jonas really makes a sorry Objectivist. He runs away, not to go on strike or gulch in the woods, but to restore feelings to his Community, knowing that he may well die in the process. By the time they escape the search planes and he has to bicycle through the snow, he doesn't even care about himself anymore — he only cares that Gabriel may suffer. Filthy, stinking Altruist! Again, I don't have the book in front of me, but near the end, when The Giver and Jonas are formulating their plan, Jonas wants his friend and mentor to leave the Community with him. The Giver says that he has to remain behind to help the others. "Giver, you and I don't need to care about the others!" Jonas exclaims.

The Giver doesn't even say anything, just stares at Jonas silently, smiling sadly. "Of course they had to care," says the narrator. "It was the meaning of everything."

I am a physicist, not a philosopher. Therefore, I'm not intimately familiar with the ways a well-trained Objectivist reasons, justifying X or Y from the basic postulate that A equals A. (My generation doesn't have time for long books; we have to get by with "Become an Objectivist in Ten Easy Steps".) I can only really judge the system based on the Objectivists I met during my bright college days, and on that basis, I find it interesting just how many works get claimed as Objectivist or having Objectivist themes. Look at the movie The Incredibles, which I liked quite a bit, actually. Some people said that it was full of Randian ideology; the director heard the allegations and went, "Huh?" The Randian partisans I know think nothing of claiming works in this way to aggrandize themselves and their principles, but perhaps they are not the best of the breed. I suppose that's a natural tendency for any member of a hyper-self-aware subculture: the reductio ad absurdum of this trait must be the Futurama episode where Star Trek fans rename Germany "Nazi Planet Episode-Land". By the bye, I Googled for pages mentioning The Giver and Anthem together, and all I got were listings of dystopian novels, plus an Amazon.com user review which got mirrored on a few other pages. And this article, of course.

If you absolutely had to pick a book and say that Lowry ripped it off, I think a much better choice would be Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Compare Camazotz and the Community, and then we'll talk. I hasten to add that, again, I don't think any similarities are the result of theft or even intentional allusion. I raise this point merely because comparing The Giver to A Wrinkle in Time or even Huxley's Brave New World sounds more fruitful. As some Dead White Male once said, "No man is the literary Adam." (I found that comment in Borges's This Craft of Verse, but I can't remember who said it originally.)

On a tangential note, have you guys listened to the audio recording of this article? I love the BBC accent; it just seems the way an encyclopedia article should be read. I'm also curious to know if anybody else thinks "Brazil" every time they hear the name "Lowry" said in a British accent.

Anville 08:40, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I think Jeanne DuPrau ripped most of this book off for her Ember. But that's just me. ''[[User:Kitia|Kitia]] 01:13, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Criticism

At some places in the article I get the feeling there is to come a substantial section covering what critics have said about the quality of the work from a literary standpoint, but it never comes. The only thing covered under "Controversy" seems to be people complaining about it being unsuitable for children. Can't somebody who knows anything about the criticism in question write a little about it? I'm interested in what critics have perceived as logical gaps, etc. and I'm sure others are as well. Miai 12:18, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Profession of Jonas's mother

The article has recently been changed to indicate that Jonas's mother is a lawyer. However, I remember her being a judge (as is said earlier versions of the article) but I don't have a copy of the novel available right now, so I can't double check. Could someone investigate, please? --GrafZahl 13:05, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Just did, she's a judge 70.111.205.97 13:23, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!--GrafZahl 09:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

What page ?

the giver

why was the giver banned? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.34.71.196 (talk • contribs) 10 March 2006 (UTC)

See the controversy section of the article. Deborah-jl _Talk 17:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

infobox

I am adding an infobox to this page per WP:NOVEL.

I hope this will not upset anyone, but I'm switching the position of the cover images. The 1999 paperback cover is now the one most commonly seen (I like it better, but that's just me); the original cover is better used where the newer one is now. Daniel Case 18:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Really? Every time I've seen the school-reading section of a bookstore, the paperbacks they sell use the original cover. Whichever order we pick for the images, though, the one in "Origins" should be right-aligned, since the left-aligned position doesn't mesh well with the indented quotations. Anville 11:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I've seen the newer cover more and more exclusively used. It's true that a lot of schools have hardbacks that still use the older one. But the newer one is what gets used in bookstores.

I normally prefer alternating the alignment of images, but I think you're right about the indented quotations being an issue here (as it has in other articles). Daniel Case 04:47, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

hey

i think this book was really boring.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 170.158.47.3 (talk • contribs) .

"coeval" in Fiona's profile

this link refers to a magazine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.135.99.6 (talk • contribs)

Now fixed. Anville 21:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

"How his community's life has become"—mending holes in the Lead section

On May 15, over a month ago, User:Ted87 removed several indispensable bits from the Lead, not least the word "shallow"" in the sentence "As Jonas receives the memories from his predecessor—the Giver—he discovers how shallow his community's life has become."[1] This was no doubt done in good faith—the edit summary says "Removed some spoilers"—and nobody seems to have noticed what a terrible sentence it left, in the most prominent position imaginable: the rhetorical climax of the Lead section. Oddly, the Dystopia, but not the Utopia, was also removed. I've put back these bits, as I feel Ted87 has a too literal notion of what a spoiler is. If anybody doesn't want them there, please rewrite the Lead to make sense without them; avoid just making holes in its fabric. Bishonen | talk 02:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC).

Considering WP:FAR

This is a featured article. I'm having some thoughts of listing it for featured article review at WP:FAR, a process that will hopefully result in improvements, but may also end in de-featuring. I hadn't realized till recently that Raul654 did promote it back in June 2005. A bit surprisingly, I think--I mean, the FAC discussion had three pretty thin Support comments and two very meaty Opposes (from Jun-Dai and me). It's also noticeable that nobody supported any more after Jun-Dai and I said our say. My opinion is subjective, obviously, and it should be noted that The Giver has been chosen to represent some of Wikipedia's best in Wikipedia:Version 0.5. I still feel the objections were very substantial, though. The article doesn't seem to have changed much in response to them. Does anybody have any plans for working on The Giver any time soon, or shall I go ahead and FAR it to get more eyes and more opinions? (Anville has already told me he doesn't have time for any major work at this time.) Bishonen | talk 17:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC).

disappointment

...is the preeminent feeling I get after reading the article, and then finding out it's got FA status. Considering the fact that, apparently, no one bothered to comb over the references very closely when one examines the cited source for the line "On the other hand, some practitioners of postmodern literary criticism suggest that a fully "adult" interpretation of Lowry's work is eminently possible [14].", I'm surprised this article got enough attention to make GA class, really. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, per se, seeing as plenty of articles have these kinds of issues and part and parcel of being a wikipedian would be to fix them without really bleating.

Which was my first instinct, too, until I checked the talk page and realized this thing had a slew of important labels, so I thought I'd mention the fact here. So, for example, if you read the reference for the abovementioned sentence, you can ctrl+f either lowry or giver and neither show up. More importantly, it's actually an article titled, "How to Deconstruct Anything," and mostly makes fun of the whole practice.

Here is a blurb from that article, when he describes a convention in which he parodied the way he sees this particular kind of academic going about its business:

"Then we set about attempting to add something that would be an adequate response to the postmodern lit crit-speak we had been inundated with that day. Since we had no idea what any of it meant (or even if it actually meant anything at all), I simply cut-and-pasted from my notes. The next day I stood up in front of the room and opened our presentation with the following:

The essential paradigm of cyberspace is creating partially situated identities out of actual or potential social reality in terms of canonical forms of human contact, thus renormalizing the phenomenology of narrative space and requiring the naturalization of the intersubjective cognitive strategy, and thereby resolving the dialectics of metaphorical thoughts, each problematic to the other, collectively redefining and reifying the paradigm of the parable of the model of the metaphor."

Now, you might say, "why is this important? Just strike the sentence and be done with it." And this too tempted me before I decided to write here; however, seeing as the literary criticism portion seems to have gone some pouring over here in the talk page, it gave me no small surprise and pause to see that such a sentence, which attempts to assert an important point, namely that this work can be serious for adults[one of the sharper critiques offered in the literary criticism section of the giver article], had a reference that was completely bogus. I'm ready to remove the sentence, but I figured I'd give people a. a headsup, b. see if someone wants to argue its preservation after reading the cited piece, and c. a bit of whining that people should pay closer attention to both references and, apparently, the whole FA process regarding some sort of quality control. Again, I wouldn't say something so stringently, but this thing is going on 0.5, spoken word, FA, and all these other accolades, so this is a basic bit of work that should've been nailed on the head. R. 18:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Controversy Section and Socialism

Under the section on the book's controversy there is a short list of commonly cited reasons for the The Giver's status as a controversial or banned piece of literature. Within the list it mentions the novel's depiction of a socialist government. Now while those concerned about this aspect of the novel might see the parallels between the government within The Giver and actual socialist governments, I think this sentence needs to be reworded. While there are certainly some parallels between some existant or formerly existant socialist governments and the government portrayed in the book, the actual name of the government's form in The Giver is never made exclusively clear and could theoretically be defined as anything from Fascism to Corporatism. Thus, I think it would best serve the neutrality of the article if the sentence were changed to something along the lines of "The novel's depiction of suicide, euthanasia, a perceived socialist government, and infanticide are typically cited as concerns."

more spoiler tags needed

In the section titled Ambiguity, there are some quotes from the author that talk about the ending of the book. If those quotes remain, then there should be spoiler tags around them. If we leave it as is, the ending will be ruined for some. TakingUpSpace 13:24, 4 December 2006 (UTC)