Senior Level for Readers [AL]
[WF]: Writing Festival, [CV]: Class Video, [TP]: Teacher's Party
Teacher Carrie
The Giver
The Giver is a story about a society in which everyone is equal to each other. The Giver was originally a book and later a movie.
The people in this community have no individual feelings so a person can't feel anything that another doesn't, which, in theory, makes them all equal. By having no memories of love or feeling love, there is no heartbreak, jealousy, or crime. Because everyone in this community has all the same things, they are equal. By having the same things, people don't need to be envious of each other. As my teacher says, this would be a good way to avoid thieves. However, if you do not have individual feelings, that would basically make you a robot.
The main characters in this story are Jonas, his brother Gabriel, and The Giver. The Giver was once the Receiver of Memory, the person who receives all the past memories. The people in the community feel that memories are pointless, so only one person like Jonas receives them all from The Giver.
Except for The Receiver and The Giver, no one has memories of the past. No one else can see colors either. At first, the film is all in black and white. My teacher says that there was a medical procedure in which the scientists made all people color blind to be more equal. Jonas at the age of twelve receives his job as the Receiver of Memory (all of the children receive their jobs from the leaders of their community at the age of twelve). In the end, Jonas tries to change the fact that people in his community, except for him and The Giver, don't experience memories. To do this, The Giver explains to Jonas that he must pass the wall of memories so that the people will have their memories back.
I have read the book and watched the movie and I highly recommend both because it shows a new type of society, its rules, and how the future might look. For example, other books about the future don’t often talk about the rules of future societies. Also, this book has a saying that “everyone is equal” and today people are not equal. So if you want to know more about a future society with rules about equality, this is going to be the right book for you.
The author doesn’t provide a clear ending, which allows the readers to imagine their own ending. I think the ending would be happy because everyone would receive his or her memories and emotions back.
Discussion questions:
Tell me what you understood from the story.
Do you want to live in the society from "The Giver"? Why or why not?
The Giver
The Giver is a story about a society in which everyone is equal to each other. The Giver was originally a book and later a movie.
The people in this community have no individual feelings so a person can't feel anything that another doesn't, which, in theory, makes them all equal. By having no memories of love or feeling love, there is no heartbreak, jealousy or crime. Because everyone in this community has all the same things, they are equal. By having the same things, people won’t be envious about something that another person has that they don’t have. As my teacher says, this would be a good way to keep away thieves. However, if you do not have individual feelings, that would basically make you a robot.
The main characters in this story are Jonas, his brother Gabriel, and The Giver. The Giver was once the Receiver of Memory, the person who receives all the past memories. The people in the community feel that memories are pointless, so only one person like Jonas receives them all from The Giver.
Except for The Receiver and The Giver, no one has memories about the past. No one else can see colors either. At first, the film is all in black and white. My teacher says that there was a medical procedure in which the scientists made all people color blind to be more equal. Jonas at the age of twelve receives his job as the Receiver of Memory (all of the children receive their jobs from the leaders of their community at the age of twelve). In the end, Jonas tries to change the fact that people in his community, except for him and The Giver, don't experience memories. To do this, The Giver explains to Jonas that he must pass the wall of memories so that the people will have their memories back.
I have read the book and watched the movie and I highly recommend both because it shows you a new type of society, its rules, and how the future might look. For example other books about the future don’t often talk about the rules of future societies. Also, this book has a saying that “everyone is equal” and today people are not equal. So if you want to know more about a future society with rules about equality, this is going to be the right book for you.
The author doesn’t provide a clear ending, which allows the readers to imagine their own ending. I think the ending would be happy because everyone would receive his or her memories and emotions back.