Everyone had their roles, no one seemed to suffer, everything was in order. And yet, I couldn’t shake that unease. It’s like walking into a spotless room where the air feels a little too clean, a little too controlled—you know something’s off, even if you can’t name it. That feeling stayed with me through every chapter, and honestly, it’s what made the story stick in my head long after I closed the book.
But Jonas, he dragged me into it. It was heartwrenching and so encouraging to watch him change, as this docile, blindly following lad, into one who began to see the faults in the society he lived in. And when he is picked to become the Receiver, I figured, Oh, this is the big thing but then I realized he was not being honored he was being shouldered. It was a kick in the gut, which is the first remembrance of pain he gets. Since, so far, the concept of pain was washed off their lives. And here came Jonas, and he had it all now, loneliness, grief, love, joy, color, warmth. It was quite a full thing to take, and I had to stop and allow it to sink in.
The most memorable moment that still lingers in my mind is when Jonas finds out what release is. That scene gutted me. The very coldness of it, the manner in which something so final, so brutal, had been made of a sterile word. I recall sitting up and having my heart racing due to the fact that it makes me consider how language can cleanse cruelty, how entire societies can be accomplice to something hideous simply by not naming it as such. It was one of those instances when fiction is too close to life.
And there is The Giver himself. The bond between him and Jonas was so humane and affectionate, as between a grandfather and a grandson, and something more, two souls bearing one another. Their muffled dialogues, how The Giver kindly led Jonas, yet confessed that he was tired himself, would have me weeping more than once. The one that made me freeze was that scene when The Giver tells about the memory of love. It has taught me that love is so easy to forget about, so common until you start to guess what this world would be like without it.That’s when the book shifted for me from being just a dystopian story to being a reminder of everything messy and beautiful about being human.
What remained with me afterward, even after having read through to the end, was not the dystopia, or even the suspense of Jonas being on the run. The manner in which the book helped me to see my own world in a different perspective was the reason. The sunset colors, the laughter of a person who I loved, even the pang of sadness all seemed much keener and dearer. The Giver makes you ask yourself, without saying at all, would you want to live in a world without pain, only to lose joy as well? That question gnawed at me. And it still does.
Therefore, reading The Giver was not a mere story experience to me. It was a wake-up call, a subtle prod to be aware of the richness of the mundane life. It continued to keep in my mind because it was reminding me that there is no real living without the full range of it: the agony, the happiness, the danger, the mess. It is not a book that you read and forget. It is a book which makes you change your perception of the world, at least a bit.
The last three images was gotten from web:
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