A Return to Normal: Lois Lowry's The Giver

A Return to Normal: Lois Lowry's The GiverSusan Louise Stewart

The Lion and the Unicorn, Volume 31, Number 1, January 2007, pp. 21-35(Article)

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A Return to Normal: Lois Lowry’s The Giver 21

The Lion and the Unicorn 31 (2007) 21–35 © 2007 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

A Return to Normal: Lois Lowry’s The Giver

Susan Louise Stewart

Lois Lowry’s The Giver has elicited a great deal of attention since its publication in 1993. Perhaps the most significant milestone came in 1994 when the Newbery Committee awarded it the gold: the prestigious Newbery Medal. This distinction does not guarantee that the novel will always remain in print—several Newbery novels are no longer in print, particularly early novels—but it certainly won’t hurt matters any. Further, its place as a Newbery novel does not mean it is well received by everyone. Indeed, the novel has encountered its share of resistance, which explains its number eleven slot on the American Library Association’s challenged books list. Generally, the novel elicits complaints due to its depiction of infanticide, euthanasia, and the descriptions of Jonas’s “stirrings,” or pu-berty-driven sexual awakening. While any number of novels might explore these ideas, the explicit description of a twin’s “release,” a euphemism for murder, is disturbing to say the least. And Jonas’s sexual awakening, which is realized through a dream he has about his friend Fiona, is highly suggestive. Jonas explains that in the dream, “I wanted her to take off her clothes and get into the tub. . . . I wanted to bathe her” (36). When asked to describe the “strongest feeling,” he replies, “The wanting. . . . I knew that she wouldn’t. And I think I knew that she shouldn’t. But I wanted it so terribly. I could feel the wanting all through me” (36, author’s emphasis). This dream comes after Jonas has bathed an elderly woman and Fiona has bathed an elderly man in a “bathing room with its warm moist air and scent of cleansing lotions” (29). While Jonas’s dream is just that—he never consummates those desires—it is nonetheless suggestive and potentially titillating.

While several readers (probably adult) find the novel disconcerting on numerous levels, the novel nevertheless has a place in the classroom. For instance, authors of texts written for pre- and in-service teachers identify the text in highly positive terms. Kenneth Donelson and Alleen Pace

Susan Louise Stewart22

Nilsen place it on their “Honor List,” a list that includes texts that they “guarantee . . . that a number of knowledgeable people—professionals as well as young readers—were favorably impressed with . . .” (15). In their comparison of Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion and Peter Dickinson’s Eva, and Lowry’s The Giver, they describe The Giver as “the most powerful and disturbing,” presumably because the people who live in this revised society “have willingly given up their freedom and their imagination for the supposed ‘good of the people’” (220). Anita Silvey, author of 100 Best Books for Children, describes the novel as “provocative, moving, and haunting,” and notes that it “emerged as an ideal story to read and share, whether in parent-child groups or in the classroom. Now with 3.5 million copies in print, The Giver has not only proved to be one of the greatest novels of the 1990s for children but also one of the greatest science-fiction novels for young readers of all time” (147).

Many scholars and critics, too, have had a great deal to say about The Giver and consider it a rich source for analysis and interpretation. A search of library databases will produce numerous articles from journals, including The Lion and the Unicorn, Children’s Literature and Education, and Children’s Literature. On the whole, scholars who offer analytical approaches to the text describe it in positive terms as well. Carrie Hintz believes that The Giver “has sensitized readers to the important subgenre of utopian and dystopian writing for children and young adults” (254). She observes that The Giver and other utopian or dystopian novels have the potential to “seriously portray dissent for younger audiences and make it clear that young people must be integrated into political life” (263). She further believes that because “these utopias are read comparatively early in a child’s political development” the text “gives young people the impres-sion that they have the capacity to remake or revision society anew” (263). Hintz speculates that Lowry and others who write adolescent dystopian literature do not “flinch at portraying the costs of utopian commitment, or of political action against dystopian coercion” (263). Thus, in Hintz’s estimation, a novel such as The Giver has the potential to affect young readers in profound ways.

Don Latham in “Childhood under Siege: Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars and The Giver” approaches the text differently when he examines how adults construct childhood through adolescent literature. In the process, Latham identifies some important characteristics of the novel when he notes how Jonas “refuses to accept passively his role or society’s rules. He displays a strong sense of individuality as well as courage and com-passion in trying to remove himself and Gabriel from this world” (13).1 The preceding represents not necessarily a positive evaluation of the text but instead a positive evaluation of Jonas’s actions.2


I am drawn to the text as well. I find the text enormously valuable in the classroom, for I have yet to read a text that has the potential to accomplish so much from both ideological and literary perspectives. While I generally take a new historicist’s approach, which provides an opportunity to discuss ideology, the conclusion’s ambiguity appeals to the New Critic in me, which encourages the discussion of literary elements. At the same time, however, I am troubled by it and the seemingly wholesale acceptance of the text, for as I suggest in the following, The Giver reifies several ideological foundations without providing a space to openly interrogate them. I further assert The Giver only reinforces many of our cultural values. True, many of those cultural values are worthy of reinforcement, but I do not believe we should accept those values without question, especially considering the world in which we now participate. Ultimately, I urge a careful examina-tion of the textual, contextual, and extratextual components associated with the novel.3 This analysis will reveal that what initially appears to be a radical approach to adolescent literature actually reinforces cultural norms. In short, the text represents a return to normal.

The Power and Diminution of Choice

Michael M. Levy in his article, “Lois Lowry’s The Giver: Interrupted Bildungsroman or Ambiguous Dystopia?” makes an astute observation. He explains, “the world of The Giver is enormously seductive” in that “Lowry has intentionally constructed its society to solve many contem-porary problems, particularly those likely to be of significance to twelve year olds and their parents” (52). That is, Jonas lives in a community set in the future, where science has finally reached its logical—and on one level, peaceful and perfect—conclusion. As is common with many dystopian novels, where science plays only a minor role, humans have achieved their goals. Conflict no longer exists, whether that conflict rests in national, racial, or ethnic communities. Science has erased difference, which would suggest the erasure of numerous conflicts. With the excep-tion of a few people who live in the community, everyone is the same. And, as described in the first three sentences on the back cover of the text, “Jonas’s world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain” (n.p.). By definition, this is utopia, someplace ideal, where no problems exist, where humans supposedly happily co-exist. This is “freedom from”—an important philosophical condition. However, the next sentence reveals that problems in paradise indeed exist when we discover that “Every person is assigned a role in the community” (n.p.). That is, people have no choice as to whom they will marry, their vocations, and as readers discover, how many children will constitute their families. Members


of the community know in advance when they will receive certain clothing and when they begin to ride a bicycle. They do not even have a choice as to what they remember. Rather, cultural memory belongs to The Giver (or Receiver)—an individual who assumes responsibility for the memories, whether cherished or painful.4 However, The Giver and Jonas—who has been chosen to receive The Giver’s memories—determine that they live in a far from perfect world, for it is one that lacks choice. And herein begins Jonas’s and readers’ return to a familiar subject position.

Jonas initially believes he lives in a colorless world, one where sci-entists have, for the most part, removed color or the ability or perhaps the desire to see it. We do not know how this is achieved. It could be through genetic manipulation or perhaps through the pills everyone takes to stifle their stirrings or sexual impulses. Nevertheless, the community is in effect color-blind. However, Jonas does in fact have the ability to see color. The Giver explains that he is developing the ability to see color, including the red tones of skin. He tells Jonas that “flesh isn’t red. But it has red tones in it. There was a time, actually—you’ll see this in the memories later—when flesh was many different colors. That was before we went to Sameness. Today flesh is all the same . . .” (94). He goes on to tell Jonas, “We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences” (95). What he does not say is that Sameness equates to light skin. And indeed, when Jonas experiences the memory of an elephant being hunted and killed, he notes, “Two of these men had dark brown skin; the others were light” (100). That he actually names brown as a color signifies his new awareness of the color differences. Just as it is a new experience for him to see the color red—in an apple, in Fiona’s hair, in skin tones—it is also a new experience for him to see something other than light skin. Thus, the Elders of the community—those who establish and enforce the rules—have dispensed with racial diversity. Rather than embrace racial difference, they erase it and choose whiteness, or least lightness, as their universal standard.

The above establishes a source of conflict for the plot and serves a struc-tural purpose. It serves as conflict for many readers as well, for they likely find this lack of choice troublesome. U.S. readers in particular have been steeped in the importance of the individual and choice. At the same time, it seems that one should have a choice to make the choice.5 But that does not occur. Rather, The Giver and Jonas take matters into their own hands, and decide that Jonas should leave the community, which will release all of the memories he has received from The Giver. With that decision, they make a choice to leave the remainder of the community without choice, which represents a fundamentally ironic and deconstructable moment. The


people of the community have no choice but to accept the inevitable flood of memories they will receive when Jonas leaves them. It might seem obvious that Jonas must do what he does, which often leads the reader to conclude that Jonas, a brave young man, supposedly helps create a brave new world. But does he really?

In one sense, he does, for when he and The Giver devise a scheme to return the citizens’ cultural memory and history to them, he makes a radical move. Jonas risks everything. He leaves the comfort and security of his community and sets out for Elsewhere, a place that he is not even certain exists. He breaks his community’s rules when he steals his father’s bike, pilfers food, and takes with him the newchild, Gabriel, who is scheduled for Release (a euphemism for state-sanctioned murder). Cumulatively, these infractions would result in Jonas’s own Release if he were caught. Consequently, in the world Lowry constructs for Jonas, he is indeed courageous, and subversive, and rebellious, which makes this a very appealing text. He represents change. However, in our world, although he would be considered courageous, he is not necessarily subversive or rebellious. While it appears that Jonas’s actions are quite radical, they are actually very conservative. He simply reinforces one of our most persis-tent fears—the loss of choice. His flight from his community is nothing less than a return to the humanist subject position many readers occupy, where the individual takes precedence over the community and where “the subject is the free, unconstrained author of meaning and action, the origin of history. Unified, knowing, and autonomous, the human being seeks a political system which guarantees freedom of choice” (Belsey 8). This is better understood when considering the inherent narrative constraints in fiction—it requires a narrator (or narrators) and provides a point of view. As a result, novels necessarily focus our attention on individual efforts even within the midst of many voices. Nevertheless, as Robyn McCallum suggests, “we need to avoid both essentialist conceptions of the human subject, which ground subjectivity in either consciousness, agency or essential selfhood—as humanism tends to do—and mechanistic social theories of subjectivity, which conceive of the subject as ‘determined by the social object’—as structuralism and poststructuralism have tended to do” (6). In many novels, a tension between humanism and poststructur-alism exists in how characters are represented. They can be depicted as agents, “with the capacity to act independently of social restraint,” or they can be situated within “a prestructured social order within which s/he is ultimately represented as disempowered and passive,” or variations of the two (McCallum 7). Adolescent fiction, because protagonists are usually represented as navigating their way out of solipsism to recognition of


their intersubjectivity, often displays humanistic tendencies to the extreme, particularly with their struggle with authority, but as McCallum believes, this type of worldview “for many is simply idealistic and unattainable” (7). The humanistic tendency in The Giver culminates in Jonas and The Giver taking matters into their own hands for what they believe will benefit his community. In reality, we often label people who take matters into their own hands for some purported good of the community “despots” or “psychopaths” or “fanatics.”

Erasing Difference

There are other aspects that we need to consider, particularly if we ap-proach The Giver as something ideologically different or even subversive. John Stephens notes that historical fiction has the “capacity to transform events which appear to be historical particularities into universals of hu-man experience” (205). It does so through the

tenets of the humanism which has broadly shaped much modern history-writ-ing since the Middle Ages. These tenets may be characterized (if perhaps a little crudely) as follows: there is an essential human nature which underlies all changing surface appearances; important human qualities, such as Reason, Love, Honour, Loyalty, Courage, etc., are transhistorical; human desires are reasonably constant, unchanging truths; history imparts “lessons” because events, in a substantial sense, are repeatable and repeated. (203)

Certainly, there is nothing at all wrong with a novel conveying what it means to be a reasonable, loving, honorable, loyal, or courageous human being. In the midst of our many social dilemmas, we could apparently use a heavy dose of all of the above. But Stephens also contends that we need to determine whether or not historical fiction is simply concerned with “re-presenting the past in our own image” and ask certain questions: “Do other systems of thinking and living demonstrate the limitations of our own? That is, is historical fiction about alterity or cultural continuity? . . . Are we dealing with Same or Other (identity or difference)?” (207). We need to ask the very same questions of science fiction (referred to here as “sf”), for sf and historical fiction share some important similarities in that “much sf is actually historical fiction—historical fiction of the future . . .” (James 113). Ultimately, The Giver fails to address alterity, reinforces cultural continuity, and actually diminishes opportunities to think in terms of difference because of its overriding humanist impetus. It also violates in very subtle ways the ideological concerns of sf as a genre. That in itself is not a crime. Indeed, some of the most interesting novels are interesting because authors confound or exceed the implicit guidelines established by particular genres. But along with the questions Stephens poses, we


must also ask what ends those violations serve. Reading from Stephens’s paradigm, Jonas’s choices may very well be suspect.

The Giver and Jonas discuss the various reasons for choices the com-munity has made. In terms of color, Jonas comments, “If everything’s the same, then there aren’t any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things! A blue tunic or a red one?” (98, emphasis in original). As the conversation deepens, The Giver notes that this is about choice, but that sometimes, when choice is involved, we “might make wrong choices” (98). Jonas agrees:

“We don’t dare let people make choices of their own.”“Not Safe?” The Giver suggested.“Definitely not safe,” Jonas said with certainty. “What if they were al-

lowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong?”“Or what if,” he went on, almost laughing at the absurdity, “they chose

their own jobs?”“Frightening, isn’t it?” The Giver said.Jonas chuckled. “Very frightening. I can’t even imagine it. We really have

to protect people from wrong choices.”“It’s safer.”“Yes,” Jonas agreed. “Much safer.” (98–99, emphasis in original)

The questions that Jonas poses entirely elide the issue of race and diver-sity.6 Or more accurately, they misdirect our attention through a sleight-of-hand maneuver. If this were only a novel about freedom of choice or the lack thereof, Jonas’s conclusions might be acceptable. However, the novel is also obliquely about our difficulty discussing diversity. Jonas’s questions do in fact have the potential to bring observations regarding racial diversity to our attention, but those questions and observations are reduced to a matter of choice: what color of tunic he wants to wear in the morning, marriage partners, and employment. Additionally, light skin becomes the norm. This is reinforced when we discover that the only people who have the “Capacity to See Beyond” (63), a mysterious ability that not even the Elders can explain, are those who have “different lighter” eyes (20). The narrator explains, “Almost every citizen in the community had dark eyes. His parents did, and Lily did, and so did all of his group members and friends. But there were a few exceptions: Jonas himself, and a female Five who he had noticed had the different lighter eyes” (20). The newchild, Gabriel, also has light eyes, and when he first sees Gabriel, he is “reminded that the light eyes were not only a rarity but gave the one who had them a certain look—what was it? Depth, he decided; as if one were looking into the clear water of the river, down to the bottom, where things might lurk which hadn’t been discovered yet. He felt self-conscious, realizing that he, too, had that look” (21, emphasis in original). And later


when Jonas meets The Giver, he “looked self-consciously into the pale eyes that mirrored his own” (75).

Lowry carefully avoids specifically naming the eye color even after Jonas possesses the capacity to identify it. But it is not difficult to infer that the eyes are blue because of the association with paleness and water. Moreover, these different eyes suggest “depth,” which the rest of the community members apparently lack, both in eye color and in their level of thought. They have, after all, relinquished their history as humans and lack the wisdom generally associated with experience.

My reading is very clearly guided by my cultural assumptions as a white reader. I have done precisely what a reader does. I have projected my own knowledge and my own light-skinned, blue-eyed image upon that which remains open and lacks description. I filled in the gaps, and I did it with my own cultural history.7 I do, however, believe we have to look carefully at how Lowry constructs and represents difference in The Giver. The community attempts to erase difference, to make the Other invisible, but difference reappears in the form of two males, both of whom have light skin and pale eyes. Ultimately, Jonas and The Giver are superior to the remainder of the community. They alone have the “Capacity to See Beyond” their current paradigm. They alone have the wisdom, insight, vision, and capacity to change their world or even contemplate that something might be amiss. They are the only ones who desire and achieve agency, perhaps because they are the only ones who even contemplate the possibility. The remainder of the dark-eyed, light-skinned community consists of drones who seem to have no desires except to maintain the status quo.

Dystopian novels serve as cultural critiques and models as to what might happen if we pursue some of our present courses. As such, they are often openly didactic. We can infer that Lowry attempts to bring to our attention the issues that arise regarding race. However, in regard to race, multiculturalism, or diversity, The Giver does not open any type of space for us to re-examine how we might talk about those issues. There is no basis for argumentation because, with the exception of Jonas and The Giver, everyone seems relatively content with the circumstances. They deal with the lives they have. They might agonize at times, as Jonas’s mother must when she makes some difficult choices, but they nevertheless maintain the status quo. As represented, the utopian/dystopian world is a viable and desirable alternative to what we presently experience. There is no war, no hunger, no racial tension, no unemployment, no concern about the future, and no worries about the elderly. And ultimately, in the contexts of Jonas’s world and the one in which readers live, the “real” world (our world), because we have choice (or at least the illusion of it),


is preferable to Jonas’s world. Thus, through Jonas’s journey to choice, to Elsewhere, nothing changes for readers. It simply serves as a reaffirma-tion of what readers have probably learned to value. But once again, the problems become evident. Initially, Jonas’s physical appearance seems ambiguous. However, Lowry ultimately creates a savior of Jonas, who is light skinned and pale eyed. With this creation, she undermines what she probably wants to accomplish. Thus, the ideology undermines itself.

The Death of Ambiguity

The New Critics gave us much in terms of an aesthetic appreciation for ambiguity. Ambiguity is a place of literary quantum possibility: the ability to occupy multiple spaces of meanings simultaneously, a liminal place, neither here nor there yet both here and there. Ambiguity can also create an ethical or moral dimension, for if no purely appropriate or cor-rect answer exists, an individual who experiences ambiguity and realizes it must often make a decision in the face of that ambiguity. And if one recognizes ambiguity, then perhaps in the midst of certainty there is room for flexibility. Ultimately, though, Lowry erases ambiguity in The Giver, much as the community erases difference.

Many readers recognize The Giver’s ambiguous ending. Many read-ers, however, do not until they’re introduced to the multiple possibilities regarding the novel’s conclusion. Those possibilities include: (1) Jonas, at the end of his long and dangerous journey, finds a home, which is the reading that many readers initially conclude is the novel’s unambiguous ending; (2) Jonas dies but Elsewhere exists as some kind of metaphysical space, the ultimate utopia: heaven; (3) Jonas freezes to death; (4) Jonas’s journey has been a circular one, and he has now returned to the com-munity, which has been transformed into a more accommodating one by his release of memories. All of the conclusions can be supported in some way or another.

While many readers, who initially see only one possible ending, ex-perience wonder when they discover that more than one possibility ex-ists, many are often annoyed. Sometimes they are uncomfortable, even distinctly dissatisfied with the multiple possibilities. However, that is one of the reasons I include The Giver; it demonstrates that a text for young readers can be more challenging than first suspected. Ambiguity suggests complexity. However, with the ensuing interviews printed as an addendum to The Giver and the publication of Messenger, which continues Jonas’s story—extratextual considerations—The Giver loses its complexity and defeats ambiguity.


Considering that one of the overriding themes of The Giver is that hu-mans must make informed decisions and then face the consequences of those decisions, it seems extremely ironic that Lowry chooses to mitigate those decisions through subsequent interviews and the publication of a subsequent novel, Messenger. Until recently, her responses regarding the conclusion of The Giver have been quite ambiguous if not ambivalent. However, a recent edition of The Giver now includes “A Readers Guide,” which incorporates an interview with Lowry. In that interview, in response to the remark that some readers wanted to know specifically how the novel ends, Lowry indicates:

Some write, or ask me when they see me, to spell it out exactly. And I don’t do that. And the reason is because The Giver is many things to many different people. People bring to it their own complicated beliefs and hopes and dreams and fears and all of that. So I don’t want to put my own feel-ings into it, my own beliefs, and ruin that for people who create their own endings in their minds. (“A Readers Guide” 6)

Nevertheless, in the next question, when the interviewer asks her whether the ending is optimistic and if Jonas survives, she responds:

I will say that I find it an optimistic ending. How could it not be an optimis-tic ending, a happy ending, when that house is there with its lights on and music is playing? So I’m always kind of surprised and disappointed when some people tell me that they think the boy and the baby just die. I don’t think they die. What form their new life takes is something I like people to figure out for themselves. And each person will give it a different ending. I think they’re out there somewhere and I think that their life has changed and their life is happy, and I would like to think that’s true for the people they left behind as well. (6)

If we read Messenger, however, Lowry’s latest novel associated with The Giver, we know what happens at the end of Jonas’s ride on the sled. Jonas, now named “The Leader,” discusses the sled, his “vehicle of arrival,” which is now in a museum. He explains, “it is true that I came on that sled. A desperate boy, half dead” (28). Even though Lowry wants readers to “figure out for themselves” how the novel ends, she expunges that choice.

Lowry, as the creative force behind The Giver and Messenger, has the artistic prerogative to do as she wishes. She, after all, created the fictional universe. And in many ways she has followed the constraints and endings to which readers are accustomed. Nevertheless, that she does diminish readers’ choices does make a difference. In an article discussing the importance of ambiguity and poetry, Herbert F. Tucker believes that examining ambiguities of poetry enables readers

to reach that whispering hinge in the mind where sound meets sign and beauty transacts with truth. They coexist within my matriculating students


in differing proportions and under differing regimes of acknowledgment and denial. To foster awareness of this inner coexistence is my chief job as a teacher: to reintroduce students’ minds to their bodies, and their hearts to their heads, by letting them find the convergence between the aesthetic and semantic needs of their humanity. (443)

I cannot determine what constitutes “truth” because I am something of a relativist, but in terms of my readerly transaction with Messenger, I no longer have a choice regarding the truth. I, and anyone else who reads Messenger, know that Jonas lives and any possible ambiguity regarding his fate perishes.

The End of the Journey

I understand the irony of what I have written above. I am clearly dis-satisfied with Lowry’s decision to publish Messenger, which ultimately removed choice from those who read both The Giver and Messenger. After all, as I indicated above, Americans are deeply invested in choice, but ultimately, through Lowry’s interviews and publication of Messenger, Lowry robs readers of that choice. This demonstrates the double—perhaps triple—bind when considering ambiguity, freedom, and choice. Regard-less of what I know or don’t know about Lowry’s motives or decisions, this was Lowry’s choice. But this demonstrates what happens with choice/freedom to and choice/freedom from. Sometimes it is much easier to have choices made for us. Lowry makes that choice with Messenger. We are given a resolution regarding Jonas’s future, which in many ways provides comfort. Similarly, having certain choices made for Jonas and those who live in this community comforts them. It eases their existence and ours, for who of us is ready to make the decisions that Jonas makes? Who of us is ready to take that responsibility? At the same time—words indicative of ambiguity—who of us is ready to have someone else make those choices for us?

As Levy suggests, The Giver might be characterized as an “ambigu-ous utopia or, perhaps, an ambiguous dystopia . . .” (51). Therein lies the problem associated with utopias, for they are generally formed at the expense of others. For many of the community members, it is indeed a utopia in that they no longer need to make decisions, and most of the world’s injustices escape them. However, as Levy further explains, “Uto-pias are static, virtually by definition. Having worked so hard to achieve a society in which there are no serious problems, the citizens of utopia want things to stay pretty much the way they are. Change essentially becomes the enemy” (53). Adolescence, too, is somewhat ambiguous if not con-flicted and vexed, for adolescents so desperately want to fit in with their


peers, yet they strive to assert their individuality. Thus, in many ways, Jonas’s actions are justified, for his community represents the antithesis of adolescence. Adolescence, as currently constructed, serves as a transition period, a time of change, adjustment, discontent, and rebellion. Change for adolescents, while it often represents a challenge, is not the enemy. Rather, it is a prerequisite for adulthood.

Further, the political and ideological nature of dystopias (or utopias) creates a ripe site for power struggles and rebellion. Roberta Seelinger Trites believes that in order for adolescent protagonists to demonstrate their ability to grow, they must often confront a parental figure (self-invented or real) “as a way to engage their own power” (54). If we consider that dystopian fiction “always reduces the world to a ‘State,’ and presents us with the struggles of an individual or a small group against that State,” then Jonas’s struggle with power is understandable (Scholes and Rabkin 34–35). Jonas has parents, but he also has a larger, more controlling, repressive authority figure in the form of the “State.” Consequently, due to expectations and constraints regarding plot and genre (either dystopian fiction or adolescent fiction), in some ways, Jonas must struggle with a contested, albeit prescribed, subject position.

This struggle also allows Jonas to examine and critique his world and should theoretically set the stage for allowing readers to examine, critique, and possibly change their contemporary world, which is a function of sf in the first place. M. Keith Booker believes that “dystopian fictions provide fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted or considered natural and inevitable” and that “dystopian fiction differs from science fiction in the specificity of its attention to social and political critique . . .” (19). Dystopian fiction does not so much offer models to follow as it does models to flee. The Giver, however, fails in providing “fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices” (19). The text ultimately returns readers to the ideals liberal humanism proposes without actually examining them and does little to challenge some concepts that under close inspection are problematic.

Literature need not have a purpose other than entertainment or provide aesthetic pleasure, but sf does have the potential to help readers ac-complish some interesting tasks. Indeed, depending on the nature of the reader, accomplishing those tasks can be an aesthetic experience in itself. But the nature of the genre allows—demands—that readers attend to the political aspects of the texts and by extension, their culture. As a genre sf, and dystopian fiction in particular, tends to make our social dilemmas larger-than-life. It is also quite manipulative, but then, nearly all literature written for young readers is in some way. The problem that arises is not


that a text is manipulative, but in how it manipulates readers or what it asks readers to do, to see, or to not see. A text such as The Giver, which seems to be so imaginative and different in terms of Jonas’s ideological, social, and political landscape, actually closes the gap between text and reader. In The Giver, we are encouraged to critique Jonas’s culture and not our own. It is also far more difficult to identify the ideologies at work in the text because they are so close to ours, even if the world Jonas inhabits is very different.

Ultimately, readers must go beyond plot and genre and examine the text critically as a way to fully examine the embedded assumptions of the text and potential solutions for our present and future problems. To do so requires textual, contextual, and extratextual considerations. That is, readers must understand the ambiguity Lowry creates and then back out of the text and contemplate the text, what Lowry discloses through her interviews, and Messenger. Only then will readers have an opportunity to see that The Giver, while interesting and provocative, has the potential to be more. First, however, they must see its ideological disposition for what it is: a return to normal.

Susan Louise Stewart is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M-Commerce, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Children’s and Adolescent Literature and Culture. Her research interests include narra-tive theory and the ideological constructs of children’s and adolescent literature.

Notes

1 Latham also offers another analysis of The Giver and an in-depth discussion of the relationship between the panopticon and The Giver in “Discipline and Its Discontents: A Foucauldian Reading of The Giver.”

2 Additionally, other scholars explain how the text is helpful in teaching, contex-tualizing, and historicizing different cultural phenomena. See, for instance, Barbara A. Helman and Patricia R. Crook’s “Doubletalk: A Literary Pairing of The Giver and We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy,” and Melissa Gross’s “The Giver and Shade’s Children: Future Views of Child Abandonment and Murder.”

3 Whereas peritext (or paratext) refers to the physical elements directly associ-ated with a text (including descriptions of the type of paper used, the dust jacket, cover, and so on), extratextual features refer to elements directly associated with but removed from the text, including (but not limited to) subsequent interviews, prequels, and sequels.


4 Levy appropriately describes Jonas as the “official community scapegoat” in that “he must hold within himself all of the agony of humanity’s long dark history . . .” (53).

5 Barry Schwartz, social theorist and author The Paradox of Choice, offers an interesting observation. He believes (as most of us believe) that lack of choice makes life “almost unbearable” and explains that we see choice, “in our consumer culture” as “powerful and positive” (3). However, Schwartz believes that we can have too much choice: “As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize” (3). Schwartz’s argument has its merits. One can be overwhelmed by choice. Perhaps, then, the choices Jonas’s community initially make are understandable. They simply took a sled ride on a slippery slope and went from unfettered choice to no choice at all.

6 Susan Lea in “Seeing Beyond Sameness: Using The Giver to Challenge Color-blind Ideology” points out that “The Giver as text is ideal for fostering inquiry into racism, a colorblind stance, and social justice, as well as for raising questions of self, identity, difference and the other” (65). While we disagree on that point, Lea’s article includes insights and applications regarding teachers’ roles in perpetuating a colorblind ideology and a type of passive racism when she explains that a “col-orblind perspective is more akin to being blind to the effect of color and that the impact on children of color in such an environment is far from benign” (62).

7 The cover also establishes expectations, for my edition depicts a light-skinned man, presumably The Giver.

Works Cited

Belsey, Catherine. The Subject of Tragedy. London: Methuen, 1985.

Booker, M. Keith. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social Criticism. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1994.

Donelson, Kenneth L., and Alleen Pace Nilsen. Literature for Today’s Young Adults. 7th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2005.

Gross, Melissa. “The Giver and Shade’s Children: Future Views of Child Abandon-ment and Murder.” Children’s Literature in Education 30 (1999): 103–17.

Helman, Barbara, and Patricia R. Crook. “Doubletalk: A Literary Pairing of The Giver and We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy. Children’s Literature in Education 29 (1998): 69–78.

Hintz, Carrie. “Monica Hughes, Lois Lowry, and Young Adult Dystopias.” The Lion and the Unicorn 26 (2002): 254–64.

James, Edward. Science Fiction in the 20th Century. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.


Latham, Don. “Childhood under Siege: Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars and The Giver.” The Lion and the Unicorn 26 (2002): 1–15.

—. “Discipline and Its Discontents: A Foucauldian Reading of The Giver.” Children’s Literature 32 (2004): 134–51.

Lea, Susan G. “Seeing Beyond Sameness: Using The Giver to Challenge Colorblind Ideology.” Children’s Literature in Education 37 (2006): 51–66.

Levy, Michael M. “Lois Lowry’s The Giver: Interrupted Bildungsroman or Am-biguous Dystopia?” Foundation 70 (Summer1997): 50–57.

Lowry, Lois. The Giver. New York: Laurel Leaf, 2002.

—. Messenger. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

McCallum, Robyn. Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity. New York: Garland, 1999.

Rabkin, Eric S., Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds. No Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1983.

“Readers Guide, A.” The Giver. Lois Lowry. New York: Laurel Leaf, 2002.

Scholes, Robert, and Eric S. Rabkin. Science Fiction: History, Science, Vision. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.

Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: Harp-erCollins, 2004.

Silvey, Anita. 100 Best Books for Children. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Stephens, John. Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction. London: Long-man, 1992.

Trites, Roberta Seelinger. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2000.

Tucker, Herbert F. “Teaching Ambiguity.” Pedagogy 3 (2003): 441–50.

A Return to Normal: Lois Lowry's The Giver

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