The Giver, by Lois Lowry will make any reader laugh, cry, and most importantly, think. Imagine living in a place where every aspect of your life is decided for you. Who you marry, what you look like, and when you die. In a world with no differences, conflict has been eliminated. Jonas has never known love, fear, jealousy, or pain.

At the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas is assigned the job of Receiver of Memories. His role will be to keep all the memories of  of a past way of life away from the society. As the Giver relives memories of love and beauty Jonas begins to realize what his world has stolen from him. As he learns what is missing, his orderly life seems to vanish before his eyes.

The most shocking and disturbing part of the book is when Jonas learns that death has not been eliminated, but only goes by a different name. The giver shows him the recording of that mornings “release to elsewhere” and Jonas sees his father weighing a set of identical twins. The heavier of the two was given to another nurturer. But the smaller is taken into another room. Jonas’s father gives the baby a shot that Jonas expects is a vaccine of some sort. Then he notices that the child’s eyes have rolled back in it’s head and it isn’t moving. The shot killed the baby.  The realization that he is one of the only two people in his community that can see things for what they truly are hits him with full force. It is only taken further when the giver explains to him that his father has no idea what he has done.

When you read a dystopian novel, often the you get a clear explanation about how and why that kind of life is bad. In The Giver, on the other hand, Lois Lowry creates a world that can’t be dismissed as good or bad. Because, if you live in a world where you don’t know the beauty that you’re missing, does a life without pain of misery sound so bad? She leaves that question open for the reader to decide for themselves.

Lois Lowry did an exceptional job on The Giver. She wove a complicated story of a life without pain, sorrow, loss, or love. It took great skill to create a world that has almost nothing in common with ours, yet is so real, with so much detail.