“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”
In a utopian society without pain or suffering, during the ceremony in which every child is assigned their forever job, a single boy called Jonas is chosen to begin his training with the man who lives at the edge of their society, the Giver. He is taught that this is a great honor, that he may never live a normal life, but his sacrifice ensures that everyone else may live theirs. Despite his confusion, he begins his classes where he is taught the truth of the world, including all of its suffering and pain, as well as all the joys made impossible in his current world. What he learns makes him question his worldview and whether humanity is really human without pain.
This Giver was my least favorite of the dystopian novels from the 20th century, though I understand the appeal of it for others. It is certainly a classic for a reason, and its depiction of humanity at its ‘best’ compared with the only person within society to be actually human is interesting. I suppose my only grievances are the depiction of women, again, which annoys me both because this book is far more modern than any of the others, written in the 1990s in comparison to the other and because the author is a woman herself. Because most of the other classic sci-fi dystopian books predate this one, I couldn’t help but feel that it was a bit repetitive, that most of the ideas had already been introduced in previous novels, and what really makes these types of books stick out is the originality of these new ideas. For these reasons I give it a 4 out of 5.