The Giver - Lois Lowry - A Short Summary and Review
The Giver - Lois Lowry - A Short Summary and Review
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
A Rite of Fancy Book Recommendation and Review
A short summary:
In The Giver, Lois Lowry imagines a society that has eliminated pain, conflict, and deep emotion in the pursuit of harmony and control. At the center of this carefully managed world is Jonas, a young boy chosen to bear the community’s memories, both beautiful and devastating, memories no one else is allowed to hold.
As Jonas receives these memories, he begins to understand the true cost of “sameness.” Color, love, grief, joy, and moral choice have all been stripped away to create safety. What remains is efficiency without empathy—and peace purchased at the expense of humanity.
My favorite quote from the book:
Questions to ponder while reading:
My review:
A deceptively simple dystopia that asks uncomfortable questions.
The Giver is a fast read, but it is anything but lightweight. Lowry distills enormous ethical questions into a quiet, restrained narrative that lingers far longer than its page count suggests. The horror here is not violence or spectacle, but restraint, what happens when pain is removed not through healing, but through denial.
The central question is devastating in its simplicity: Can a society be perfect if it refuses to remember suffering? Jonas’s burden reveals that pain and memory are inseparable from love, meaning, and moral responsibility.
Frequently challenged and often underestimated, The Giver trusts young readers and adults to wrestle with complexity. That trust is precisely why it endures. Be a rebel. Read it.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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