Within the strict guidelines reserves the right to one specially selected community resident to retain all of the memories for the community as a whole. This selected resident is known as The Receiver of Memory and is highly respected. As the reader learns when Jonas is “selected” for this duty, that it is extremely important and is “the job which is the most honored in the community” (61). The retiring Receiver of Memory, The Giver, passes on the memories of the community and of the entire world onto Jonas through senses. All of the memories that passed onto Jonas are new to him and according to the rules must remain mysterious to the rest of the community. Some of the memories passed on include enjoyable ones like snow, sledding, trees, and colors. However, other memories The Giver passes on to Jonas are not so enjoyable such as pain, suffering, and death.
The selection of jobs like Jonas’ is the foundation for the structure of the small community. The community keeps careful order of the residents by grouping them according to similar age groups starting at birth. As each group progresses to an older age group, the community ensures that the most suitable residents fill specific jobs and even families according to their abilities and interests observed and determined by the community residents. “The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices were so carefully made” (48). The community residents put families together by selection and request from an already selected couple and were assigned exactly two children each.
Such structure was important for the community to retain its perfect environment; even the sight of colors and different weather patterns as Jonas learned were not allowed. As The Giver tried to explain the community and Jonas’ new assignment he stated, “they don’t want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable—so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen” (103). As Jonas received more and more of the community’s memories, including death and release, he began to gain an appreciation for each memory individually. He wished that the entire community could share them as well so that they too could have the same appreciation since he was beginning to realize how orderly and empty the lack of memories was keeping the community. “He knew they could not understand without the memories” since without them they could never experience things like love and pain (135). The community designated The Receiver of Memory to possess all of the memories to ensure that they did not repeat the mistakes of their past and to prevent change.
The memories transformed Jonas and allowed him to appreciate the importance of the memories for the survival of each resident in the community. The memories gave Jonas his own individualism, something he didn’t understand why it was being kept from the entire community. Jonas was determined to change the way the community structured itself forever by giving the citizens their own history. He released himself from the community physically and mentally in a quest to find Elsewhere in order to help The Giver disperse the memories to the entire community. “He was awed by the surprise that lay beyond each curve of the road after a life of Sameness and predictability” (172). His journey, like the memories, taught him more about the outside world because he experienced the dangers of hunger and exhaustion first hand.
Jonas’ character develops and transforms dramatically as do the central themes throughout the Lowry’s book. The transferring of the community’s memories onto Jonas created a sense of individualism for himself as well as his questioning of the current community structure. The memories transformed Jonas as he in turn plans to transform his community. He experiences the importance of individualism and sets out on a life threatening quest in hopes to allow the community as a whole to experience individualism too. However the ending is uncertain, Jonas himself is successful at understanding the importance of societal relationships by staying strong and searching for a change for his entire community.
