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The Giver, . - Coggle Diagram
The Giver
Protagonist
Jonas, an eleven-year-old boy who is chosen to be the new Receiver when he is twelve.
Point of view
The story is told completely from Jonas’s point of view. We see all the actions and events through Jonas’s eyes and do not have access to any information to which Jonas does not have access
Tone
Lowry uses direct, simple language with very few figures of speech or ironic comments (though Jonas and the Giver make ironic statements.) The simplicity of the language is appropriate for Lowry’s audience, children between eleven and fifteen, but it also echoes the “precision of language” demanded by Jonas’s community. Despite the simplicity, the tone is somewhat elevated, suited to the nature of Jonas’s discoveries about the richness of life
Plot Analysis
The Giver is the story of Jonas gradually coming to reject the values of the society he has grown up with, a society that prizes “Sameness” above everything else. By the end of the novel, Jonas embraces a new set of values entirely. In the community in which Jonas has grown up, people have very little individual liberty or choice. Instead, they live according to prescriptive rules and are allowed no personal feelings or privacy.
Antagonist
The antagonist in The Giver is society itself. The primary conflict in The Giver revolves around Jonas’s rejection of his society’s restrictive ideal of Sameness. Although the elders make decisions for the community, they themselves merely uphold a system put in place by their forebears.
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Themes
The importance of memory; the relationship between pain and pleasure; the importance of the individual
Style
The overall style of The Giver is a plain and matter-of-fact. The Giver is set in a world where variation has been minimized in preference to “Sameness,” where there is no color and no visual beauty. Appropriately, Lowry mostly uses an unadorned, sometimes repetitive style to present that world. The apple Jonas takes from the recreation area is described.
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