Would you like to live in a society where everything is perfect, (the definition of perfection would be as per the creator)? What is perfect according to you?
Can you imagine a perfect community where every family has one daughter and one son? A community where everyone has well-defined work, and they have clarity about what they need to do in various situations. Even people are matched according to their energy levels, intelligence, etc., and are married. A community where they have birthmothers, whose job is to give birth to babies and give it to the community. The community works on certain set rules and children learn various tasks assigned for every age. Things change when a child turns 12. That’s when they are assigned their roles in the community based on their inclination or earlier performance. The worst part is that they don't have certain feelings, or memories and live in evenness. They can't see colour and can't experience many other feelings.
The Giver is the story about a family in a Utopian society (?) A mom, a dad who is a nurturer, a son named Jonas, and a daughter Lily. The main character in the book is Jonas, who is assigned a role when he turns 12. The Role assigned to Jonas is very intriguing and propels the story forward very fast as I wanted to know what comes next.
The worst part about the society was that they see no colour, everything is grey to them as they have been genetically modified so that there is evenness! They are not allowed to have any emotional outbursts.
I found it cute that they had a fixed age when a child could ride a bicycle before which they are not allowed to touch it.
To enjoy happiness one must know what it feels to be sad, to enjoy comfort, one must know what are hardships, and even to enjoy food one needs hunger.
The book, I felt, was partly like Handmaid's Tale ( the birth mother part), partly like Divergent (where everybody was assigned roles too) and had an Orwellian touch to it too.
I somehow enjoy dystopian books. The weirdness in this genre always produces contemplative stories that question so many aspects of society.
Another aspect of the book that I really enjoyed was the concept of memories. In a computer, memory is stored on a hard disk. Would it be nice if we had a hard disk if all the memories of all the human beings stored in it?
This is such a beautiful story with a very ambiguous ending.
Very easy to read and it’s a MUST-READ!