Before The Hunger Games

With all of the hullabaloo (and yes that is a word spell check says so) around The Hunger Games series I decided to go back to my bookshelf and see what got me into possible dystopian futures in the first place.  As I was perusing the stacks I came across one of my favorite books The Giver by Lois Lowry.  Now be warned this is not "The Hunger Games" it is much slower paced, no fighting to the death, no tracker jackers, but in my mind still very disturbing.

The story starts of with Jonas and his family talking about his upcoming 12th year ceremony and how he will be put into job training.  His sister will be turning 8 and is excited about receiving her bike.  The world seems fairly idyllic, family's are together, everybody has a purpose and every year in childhood brings new rewards and responsibilities.  On the morning of the ceremony he tells his parents of a dream he had, in the dream he wanted to bathe his friend Fiona, but he also felt angry that she was laughing at him.  After hearing of his dream his mother gives him pills to suppress the "Stirrings", she informs him that he needs to take one pill every day for the rest of his life.  At the ceremony Jonas is excited to receive his work assignment, but his
 number is skipped over.  After the ceremony the Chief Elder informs Jonas that he has been selected to be the next Receiver of Memory, he also reveals that one had been selected six years before, but that they had not worked out.  Jonas is frightened of this new task as he is told it will involve physical pain that is not usually felt by the people of his world.  Here it is noted that Jonas has lighter eyes then most of the people in his town, and that all people have a very similar appearance to one another.  Jonas begins his training, and the first step is to stop taking his pill every morning.  The previous Receiver of Memory has become old and before he dies has now become the Giver and must telepathically give Jonas all of the memories of how things were "before", this includes things such as violence, war, hunger, but also happy things such as joy, beauty, adventure and even   animals.  It becomes more apparent that in this place all extremes have been given up in favor of a bland safe life.
 All things and emotions that may lead to extreme reactions or to differentiating people from each other have been eliminated to try and keep people content and safe.
 To further illustrate the lengths this place goes to, to ensure the status quo is kept the book shows Jonas watching his father weigh a set of identical twins and euthanize (which they call Releasing) the lighter one.  The ease with which his father killed the infant who's only crime was being the lighter of the twins and the complete disregard as he dumps the body down the garbage chute horrifies Jonas and makes him realize how wrong this place has become. Back at home Jonas is experiencing the side effects of having all these memories dumped into his head.  One of the effect I thought was really cool was that he could start to see color (here we realize on of the things taken away from the populace was the ability to see anything other then gray scale, now  I am all for being color blind when it comes to race and how people look, but this is just a bit on the extreme side).  Red is the first color to come back and when he was trying to describe it for the first time was fascinating...go ahead and try to describe the color red to somebody who has never seen a color before...kinda impossible.  Anyways these new memories are making it hard to live with his family who are still as bland as always.  They do however have a baby boy named Gabriel in the house (who also has light eyes) and the father is trying to help him get stronger so that they will not have to Release him for failure to thrive.  I thought this was interesting because it shows that these people are not hard hearted monsters, but people who are honestly doing what they think is right for the good of all. It is also revealed that Jonas can transfer memories to Gabriel in much the same way he receives them from the Giver, and uses happy ones to try and soothe the child.
Jonas and The Giver decide that it is time for the people to get back the memories that have been "kept in storage" all this time. They decide the best way to do this is for Jonas to leave the town and all the memories will be released back into the general populace (slight plot hole here 'cause it is never really explained how this works).  As he prepares to leave he learns that Gabriel is not making sufficient progress and will be Released the following morning.  Jonas takes Gabriel and leaves.  The escape seems to work and the search parties are soon called off, however the pair run out of food and start to freeze in the non temp controlled environment.  When he is about to give up Jonas recalls the memory of sunshine and makes on final push to get Gabriel to safety.  He come over a hill and hears music for the first time and comes to a village.  The ending is a bit ambiguous as he seems to be suffering from sever hypothermia.  The ending seems be open ended and the reader can decide if he made it to safety or froze to death with the happy memories keeping him warm.  Two more books and one more one the way are supposed to be sequels to this one and tell us more about the fate of these two and the shape the rest of the world is in, but more on that later.
Wow this post got super long, but I really really really love this book, the other books are ok, but this is the  
    one that really sticks in my head.  I love how at the start of the book everything seems great, they do not seem to be overly controlled, they seem to be allowed to make choices and experience happiness and disappointment.  It is not until later that you see the more insidious and frankly scary measures put into place to ensure this bland existence.  I think it brings up a ton of great questions to think about, like what are we willing to give up individually to keep the whole safe, how much is free will worth, how easy is it to take great ideals such as not judging people by their physical appearance and turn them into something quit monstrous.  This book is not perfect, the plausibility and mechanics are not all sound, but I still think the over all book is one everybody should read and discuss.

What would you give up to ensure your family, community was safe and happy?  What is the line between ideals and oppression?    Did you actually read this whole post?  If you did you should reward yourself with a big gooey chocolate chip cookie!