The Giver was, is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. I remember first reading it in eighth grade, being horrified (but in perfect awe) of the dystopian society Lois Lowry had created: ‘Sameness,’ a secluded and self-contained community where comfort and peace are paid for with a terrible price. In exchange for their memories, the inhabitants are welcomed to live in this gated community where all traces of hunger, war, pain, disease and poverty have been erased and anything leading to conflict of any kind, eradicated. Therefore, the land is flat. There is no color. There is no weather, among many other things. Different land, color, weather lead to different preferences and opinions, leading to conflict and confusion, leading to destruction. Variation of any kind cannot be tolerated in the land of Sameness.
There are 50 babies born to the Birth-mothers every year. The newborns are then assigned a ‘family unit’. As they mature, the children are separated into three age-designated groups of adolescence—Threes, Sevens, and Nines—each having specialized clothes and activities. Upon the ‘Ceremony of Twelve,’ the children, now preteens, are assigned their lifelong professions by the Committee of Elders, the rulers of the community. The most important position is Receiver of Memory, someone with the extraordinary burden to receive all of the memories and experiences of the people of the community given up for utopia from the previous Receiver of Memory, The Giver. I read Lowry’s work with profound admiration for her imagination and thanked my lucky stars that I would never have to live in such a God-forsaken place. I could often feel my jaw drop and my eyes bug out of my skull as we read aloud in class, bringing to life the sickening illusion of superior normality, flawless morality, blameless philosophy, but once again, I’ve been forced to think differently.
Much to my dismay, Lois Lowry’s dystopia is exactly the world I live in. We give up what we don’t think is important for what we think will be better when our sacrifices tend to be the most valuable things we have that make life worth living. We cut corners to keep away the pain when what we cut away is more crucial to happiness than we know. Just as the civilians lived in the illusion of happiness, reacting and feeling only as they have been taught by people who in truth knew no better than them, so we've made ourselves content at the expense who we really are and what we are made to do. We live according to the misguided laws of our blind world. We wage war without understanding the concept of murder. We have sex and get married and have children without knowing what it is to love. We strive and achieve without knowing the true purpose and value of work. We binge and gorge without knowing the beauty of simplicity and importance of self-control. We think we understand. We think we know. When we don't.
Only Jesus knows. I don’t remember what I was doing or why The Giver was even on my mind, but I thought, “If Jesus would be anybody in the community, he would be The Giver.” Because He’s the only one who knows the truth. He holds all of our experiences and feelings inside Him. He holds the laughter and beauty we relinquished for power. He carries the innocence we forfeited in our Fall. He bears the truth we forsook for lies. But most importantly, He carries the excruciating price of our sins. What we experience is a taste, a mere morsel of what it means to feel true pain, true fear, true love. The only way to bring light to our world, purpose to our lives, color to our eyes and true magic to our hearts is to go before Him and receive His memories: the truth of our sins. Our choices, however well meaning, are lost and hurtful without His guidance. He distinguishes what feels right from what is right as they are not always the same. He frees us, making us see the world as it is and should be, not as we make it or want it to be. There is no life without pain, but there is a life with Him and it makes all the difference.
Reading, I wondered who could ever abandon their memories to live in a false utopia. I wanted to believe I could never make the same choice...but I have. Lowry's characters don’t just live in a book. They’re our family, our friends, our neighbors, our nation. They are me. I am a citizen of the community of Sameness, taking in what helps me and leaving out what hurts me.
