The Giver

This was my first time reading Lois Lowry’s 1993 award-winning, young adult novel “The Giver.” It’s a slim book, which is coming out as a movie in August, starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, and even Taylor Swift among others. I was curious about the book and had to check it out. Perhaps a few of these older novels such as this one and “Ender’s Game,” which have recently been made into movies, are trying to follow-up on the coattails of the young-adult movie audiences for “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent.” The young-adult medium is sure the rage these days, though perhaps it’s always been pretty popular.

The movie trailer of “The Giver” appears to expand on the book and take some liberties with it. It gives off a sort of “Handmaid’s Tale” creepiness, too. And like that novel, and “Brave New World,” “The Giver” takes place in a utopian society in the future where things are tightly controlled, restricted, and not at all what they seem.

The community in “The Giver” has taken away hunger, war, suffering, unemployment, and sickness but has also eliminated color, music, and love. A selected handful of “Elders” control whom people marry, which children and jobs they get, and when they will be “released.” Choice has been restricted, and life follows a “Sameness” plan, where even people’s capacity for memories is eliminated and borne instead by a “Receiver of Memories.” He alone knows the past, but is now an old man who is called upon to train a successor.

Jonas is the eleven-year-old boy selected to be the next “Receiver of Memories.” But as he trains with the old man (the Giver) he comes to realize from the past the possibilities of what life once was. He’s able for the first time to see color and feel warmth, and becomes disillusioned with his family and the community for how it is. Ultimately it’s when he discovers a hidden chilling truth about what’s going on, that he decides to hatch a plot to change the “Sameness” and escape the community’s pain-free, sterile world.

It’s an interesting little book, which spookiness has stayed with me for awhile after. It’s not that “The Giver” necessarily blew me away with its storytelling or its message but its cautionary tale of such a colorless society is simply and straightforwardly told, and I followed Jonas eagerly to the depths of his journey of discovery. I’ll be looking forward to see how the filmmakers handle this utopian-turned-dystopian tale. Judging by the old man (the Giver) on the book’s cover, I haven’t exactly been able to picture Jeff Bridges as him, but we will see. As long as the movie captures some of the book’s eeriness and forewarning, it might just work.

What about you — have you read this Newbery Medal winner? And what did you think? Do you plan to see the movie?