Jonas' community is very predictable, familiar, and safe. Lowry used this experience to create the community in which Jonas, the protagonist, or main character, in The Giver, lives. While in Tokyo, Lowry oftentimes rode her bike to visit a nearby Japanese community, where everything was foreign to her, including the language, colors, smells, and even the way people dressed and acted. The community was very familiar and safe because it resembled other communities in the United States, where she'd lived earlier in her life. Lowry lived with her family in an Americanized community in Tokyo, Japan, when she was a young girl. Lowry's memories are the basis for The Giver, and her writing conveys lessons about life to her readers. She learned from her memories that living in a perfect society is not risk-free, that dangers lurk in a society in which everything is the same and in which the freedom to choose how to live has been given up.

Don't miss the powerful companion novels in Lois Lowry's Giver Quartet: Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son.As Lois Lowry stated in her acceptance speech when she won the Newbery Medal for The Giver, she began writing a book that takes place in a utopia, where everything is perfect. The Giver has become one of the most influential novels of our time. In the telling it questions every value we have taken for granted and reexamines our most deeply held beliefs. Told with deceptive simplicity, this is the provocative story of a boy who experiences something incredible and undertakes something impossible. But when his own power is put to the test-when he must try to save someone he loves-he may not be ready. Gradually Jonas learns that power lies in feelings. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. Citizens are assigned their partners and their jobs. Designated birthmothers produce newchildren, who are assigned to appropriate family units.

Life in the community where Jonas lives is idyllic. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community. In Lois Lowry’s Newbery Medal–winning classic, twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world.

The giver novel