The Giver is authored by Lois Lowry, and a requisite text for class Xs in Bhutan. This is the second novel that is introduced formally to high-school students in Bhutan. The following post gives a brief background of the novel.
Brief
biography of Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry was born Lois Ann Hammersburg,
the second of three children. After moving with her family to New York,
Pennsylvania, and Japan, she attended high school in Staten Island, New York
and in 1954 began college at Brown. At age 19, Lowry left Brown to marry Donald
Lowry, a U.S. Navy officer. After having four children, she eventually
completed her B.A. in English at the University of Maine in 1972. During her
studies she was introduced to photography, which became a life-long hobby and
profession. When an editor at Houghton Mifflin read an article Lowry had
written for Redbook to accompany some of her photos, she encouraged Lowry to
write a children's book, and A Summer to Die was published in 1977. Lowry and
her husband divorced that same year, and she began to write full-time. She has
published numerous books, including her most famous, The Giver, in 1993.
Historical
context of The Giver
Lowry wrote The Giver during the period of
ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, when Serbian forces attempted to rid the country of
Muslims. At the same time, a debate was raging in the U.S. over the practice of
euthanasia by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Lowry's novel explores each of these
developments in its treatment of outsiders, intolerance, societal perfection,
and physician-assisted suicide.
Other
books related to The Giver
In the genre of the Utopian novel, which
gets its name from Sir Thomas More's 1516 book Utopia, an author describes an
ideal society in order to criticize his own society. In a Dystopian novel, an
author imagines the worst possible society as a way to criticize their current
world. The Giver is a dystopian novel that imagines a future community whose
citizens have sacrificed free choice, individuality, and true emotion for
stability. The Giver resembles Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, a satirical
novel also about a society in which the citizens have given up their freedom
for the guarantee of happiness. The loudspeakers that serve as the voice of
authority in the community and the surveillance of citizens by the committee of
elders in The Giver are reminiscent of Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984.
Key
Facts about The Giver
- Full Title: The Giver
- When Written: Early 1990s
- Where Written: Maine
- When Published: April 16, 1993
- Literary Period: Contemporary
- Genre: Dystopian novel
- Setting: A managed community in a futuristic society. The community is cut off from the outside world, which is referred to as "elsewhere."
- Climax: Jonas learns that when his father "releases" newchildren, he actually kills them. Jonas decides to leave the community.
- Antagonist: Jonas's community and its system of Sameness
- Point of View: Third-person limited, through Jonas's eyes
Extra Credit for The Giver
- Awards: The Giver won the 1994 Newbery Medal, considered the most prestigious award for children's literature.
- Banned Book: Although The Giver tops countless school reading lists, it has also been banned by some schools, which claim that some of the material, like euthanasia and suicide, is inappropriate for children.
- One of Three: Lowry has written two more books set in the world of The Giver and including some of the characters from The Giver. The three books together are often described as a "loose trilogy." The second book in the series is Gathering Blue and was published in 2000. The third, The Messenger, was published in 2004.