Chapter 24

Austin Witthun 2/22/12

24

Authors note: this is a chapter following the last chapter, chapter 23. It is predicting what happens after the memories are released in the community.

The suffering started slowly. It started with a Twelve. He started to feel warm. Then he began to sweat. He was immediately sent home from school to his dwelling. At first his mother had thought that it was a fever. But then the boy started to comprehend what had happened.

“I felt something that I have never felt. Something told me it was called warmth. Well, I wasn’t told it but, I sort of remembered what it was. Then it became unbearable. I felt something else after that too, when I touched my skin. It was an unpleasant feeling that when it occurred, I felt it was called pain.” He was immediately brought to the hospital. Because they could not find anything wrong with the boy, he was brought before the council, who after about half an hour sent for The Giver. When The Giver walked into the room, he was peppered with questions.

“What has happened to the boy?” the council asked angrily.

The giver thought for a moment after he examined the boy and was told his symptoms.

“It must be sunburn” The Giver said. The council then asked The Giver to leave the room to discuss this with them so that the boy wouldn’t hear.

“Now Giver,” one of the members of the council said. “You do know that the Sameness makes these things go away. Are you suggesting that the Sameness is failing?” The Giver thought about this too. Although in his mind he knew exactly why this was happening, he couldn’t let anyone know. And the only other person who did know was hundreds, maybe even thousands of miles away.

As the hours passed, more and more people started to feel these strange things that The Giver had described as emotions. Some felt the burning sensation, like the case of the boy, but others felt cold of varying extremes. Some felt starvation and, others pain of broken limbs. But, some of the Community had felt emotions that were different than these. Friendship, love and, joy were felt among some but were equally disturbing to the people.

“We should go and find The Receiver; he may have an idea about what is going on.” Although this was just a trick by The Giver, so that the council, and eventually the community would realize the truth. And that truth was plain and simple. None of them would ever see Jonas again.

During the search for Jonas, Jonas’ parents had realized that Gabriel was nowhere to be found. They then were to search for Jonas and the baby. Eventually after three hours of searching his own and the dwellings of his friends, the search part came to the river. While searching up and down the river, someone found a pile of clothes that had belonged to Jonas. The search party was quiet for a while. Then Jonas’ dad was the first to speak.

“He must have fallen in the river. I thought that he could swim, the current must have been strong.” then as the people were wondering what to do next The Giver spoke:

“ We must honor Jonas. Commence the missing person ceremony.” Then as the people walked back to their dwellings, they called out Jonas’ name loudly. As the day went by, they said it quieter and quieter until it was just a whisper. The next day, after having no luck with finding Gabriel, they had another missing person ceremony for Gabriel. After that the rules of the Receiver were under close examination for the safety of the Receiver to ensure that a tragedy like this would never happen again.

Life in the Memories Essay

Austin Witthun 2/22/12

Life in the Memories

Authors note: this is a 5 paragraph essay about how the quote "You understand, don’t you, that this is my life? The memories?" shows that the Receiver is an important job that will take over someone’s life.

When someone has an extremely important job, it probably needs to have constant attention. If that is the case, then it would require extra attention that a normal job wouldn’t. It would take time that would cut into your outside life. The same thing happens in the story The Giver by Lois Lowry, when The Giver says "You understand, don’t you, that this is my life? The memories?”

In the community that Jonas lives in, the people have never experienced any emotion ever. They have this thing called Sameness which is where the weather is always the same and there is now sunlight and no colors. They are completely numb to their surroundings and if they were to start feeling emotions, it would impact them very strongly. The Receiver’s job is to hold all of these memories so that the people are not exposed to them. When the people don’t have emotions then the committee believes that they function more efficiently and that there would be less crime.

Because everyone else cannot have the memories, Jonas and The Giver have a very heavy burden on their shoulders. If anything were to happen to them, like the previous receiver who applied for a release for herself (this released all of the memories into the community), then the people would suffer because among those memories are memories of war violence and pain. This is why the receiver’s job is so important.

In addition to my other reasons that contribute to the fact that the Receiver is a job that will take over the owner’s life is that in the end of the book it totally changes his life because he leaves the Community. By leaving the community he is letting all of the memories that he has in his possession go back to the people of the community. That changes the people’s life but it changes Jonas’ more dramatically. This is so because he is far away from his family and friends and he has to take care of Gabriel.

Although the receiver is an important job it is not an easy one. A few people couldn’t handle it. For example the receiver previous to Jonas, Rosemary, couldn’t. After 3 weeks of memories including the painful ones, she applied for a release. This lead to the council changing the rules of the receiver, so that they cannot apply for a release. When Jonas runs away it is the same thing as being released except that he doesn’t die. The farther he gets away from the community, the more memories he loses as they go back to the citizens of the community. These are the reasons that being the Receiver is one of the most important jobs and it will always take over the owners life.

Life in the Memories

Life in the Memories

Authors note: this is a 3 paragraph response about how the quote "You understand, don’t you, that this is my life? The memories?" shows that the Receiver is an important job.

When someone has an extremely important job, it probably needs to have constant attention. If that is the case, then it would require extra attention that a normal job wouldn’t. It would take time that would cut into your outside life. The same thing happens in the story The Giver by Lois Lowry, when The Giver says "You understand, don’t you, that this is my life? The memories?”

In the community that Jonas lives in, the people have never experienced any emotion ever. They have this thing called Sameness which is where the weather is always the same and there is now sunlight and no colors. They are completely numb to their surroundings and if they were to start feeling emotions, it would impact them very strongly. The Receiver’s job is to hold all of these memories so that the people are not exposed to them. When the people don’t have emotions then the committee believes that they function more efficiently and that there would be less crime.

Because everyone else cannot have the memories, Jonas and The Giver have a very heavy burden on their shoulders. If anything were to happen to them, like the previous receiver who applied for a release for herself (this released all of the memories into the community), then the people would suffer because among those memories are memories of war violence and pain. This is why the receiver’s job is so important.

Speech for the Giver

Speech for The Giver

In The Giver by Lois Lowry, the main character, Jonas lives in this community where when you turn 12 years old, your career is decided for you. The choice is based on where you volunteer your time like distributing food or helping old people and a bunch of other jobs. When Jonas turns 12 his job is to be the receiver and the receiver has to hold all the memories of the world from pain of starvation to surfing on the ocean. My prediction is that Jonas’ work will become his whole life. First because the giver is the same way saying that: “that this is my life” referring to his job to tell Jonas how much of his life his job is. My second reason is because Jonas can’t tell his friends or family about his job so, no one else knows what he does. The last reason is that since he can’t share anything with anyone he can’t tell his friends about anything so he might lose his friends and have only his job.