'The Giver' af Lois Lowry: analyse og temaer

The Giver is about a boy named Jonas. He lives in a community where all people are the same. In the community, you get a job when you are twelve and you have that job for the rest of your life until get old and released. Everyone has the same birthday, so they all get their jobs on the same day. When one is released they get a syringe with poison injected and they go to Elsewhere. This happens to old people, babies, and people that do not fit in. No one can see any color, feel pain, have sexual dreams because of a medicine that they are given every day. While Jonas is at the Ceremony of Twelve, he is very excited. During the ceremony Jonas is standing beside his friend Asher. The ceremony starts and it was time for Jonas´ turn. The Chef Elder skips Jonas and goes on to Asher. The ceremony ends and Jonas stays standing on the stage. The Chef Elder comes back to the stage and says that Jonas is going to have a very special job. He is going to be the reciver. It is very special because there is only one that can be the reciver. The receiver is to receive all the memories from the past so that the community does not make the same mistakes. After the Giver has given Jonas the memories, then he will be the only one who knows about the past. He is very relieved after he gets the job but is also very nervous because he does not know if he is good enough for the job. When he comes home there is brought a baby to their house and he is named Gabriel. Gabriel has the same birthmark as Jonas. The next day he bikes over to the edge of the community because that is where his training is. He walks in and the Giver is sitting in a chair looking out at the skies under him. He tells Jonas to come and sit with him. He walks slowly to him and sits down and the Giver tells him to give him his hands because he wants to show him something. The Giver takes Jonas´ hands and he suddenly feels like he is in another world. There is snow all over the place. He has never seen snow before. There is a sledge in front of him so he sits down on the sledge and rides down the hill with full speed. It is the most fun thing he ever has tried. When he comes back to the Giver he is so excited and just wants to try it again. The Giver gives him a lot of different memories. For example, where he is out on the sea and dancing with a lot of people and everybody is happy. He wakes up from the dreams and slowly he begins to see some different colors. He asks why everyone in the community does not do what he sees in the memories, like dance and make love to each other. The Giver tells him that it is because of the medicine they get every day. This makes Jonas disappointed and mad. He wants everybody to know what he has seen. Jonas asks if there is anything he can do so the others can see colors and see what he has seen in the dreams. He says that the way to get the memories back to the community is that Jonas has to get past the two towers by Elsewhere, like the Giver´s daughter, who also had been a receiver, had done and gave the memories she had received to the community. After Jonas has gotten many good memories, the Giver starts to show him the bad. For example, war, pain, and what it actually means to be released. Later he hears that Gabriel is going to be released to Elsewhere, because he has problems sleeping and is difficult. So he bikes to the hospital and takes Gabriel. He bikes towards the two towers, because he want to give everyone the memories back. Everything then starts to look like the world that we know and it starts to snow. He climbs a hill and finds a sledge and slides down a hill with Gabriel. In the distance Jonas can see a village with lights and he can hear music playing.