The Giver was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1993, winning the Newbery Medal in 1994. It is one of the most read, most taught, and most challenged books in American education — assigned in schools for its philosophical depth and challenged by parents for its treatment of euthanasia, sexuality, and moral ambiguity.
Jonas lives in a Community that has achieved “Sameness”: there is no war, no poverty, no unemployment, no conflict. There is also no color, no music, no love, no choice. Citizens are assigned spouses, children, and careers by a Committee of Elders. The old and the imperfect are “released” (a euphemism whose meaning Jonas discovers with horror). At the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas is assigned the rare role of Receiver of Memory — the person who holds all the community’s suppressed memories of the time before Sameness.
The Giver — the previous Receiver, now old — transmits memories to Jonas: snow, sunshine, color, music, love, war, starvation, pain. Jonas experiences the full range of human experience that his community has eliminated, and he must decide whether the absence of suffering is worth the absence of joy — whether a painless life without choice is life at all.
Lowry’s genius is creating a dystopia that is genuinely attractive: the Community works. People are content. No one suffers. The argument against it must be philosophical rather than practical — and this makes it a more disturbing and more thought-provoking dystopia than those built on obvious oppression.
Collecting The Giver
First edition (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1993): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $100–$400
- Signed first edition: $200–$600
- Without jacket: $20–$40
- Later printings: $5–$15