The Giver

Each morning, families perform a ritual that involves sharing their dreams from the night before. Jonas seldom dreams, but he had a vivid dream the night before. He is required to speak about it, just as he is required to talk about his feelings after dinner. Jonas doesn’t want to share his dream because he’s still trying to make sense of it.

Jonas’s mother and sister describe dreams about the terror that accompanies transgressions. When Jonas’s turn arrives, he feels embarrassed as he starts to talk. He and Fiona are back in the bathing room at the House of the Old, and he is trying to convince her to disrobe so that he can bathe her. He feels slightly angry because she doesn’t seem to take him seriously. The dream was filled with a “wanting” (36), he says, and a sense that he shouldn’t feel this way. The community calls these types of desires "Stirrings" (37), and the Speaker often spouts reminders that Stirrings must be reported for treatment. Stirrings start happening when people are about Jonas’s age, at which point they must take a daily pill to quell them. Jonas knows that Asher takes the pills, although he has never asked him about it directly: “It was the sort of thing one didn’t ask a friend about because it might have fallen into that uncomfortable category of ‘being different’” (38). Jonas is aware that the dream about Fiona brought him pleasure, but the pill will make that feeling seem distant.

Children wear uniforms that indicate their age and the degree of independence they’ve earned. For instance, Sixes wear jackets that close in back so that they have to help each other get dressed. Receiving jackets with buttons in the front is “the first sign of independence, the very first visible symbol of growing up” (40). The bicycles Nines receive symbolize that they are moving closer to adulthood and farther from the families that have raised them. In becoming an Eight, Lily receives a jacket with pockets to show that she is mature enough to keep track of small belongings.

Gabriel is not headed to the ceremonies with Jonas’s family. He is back at the Nurturing Center. The Committee of Elders has done something unusual: it has given him an additional year of nurturing before he is either named and placed with a family or released from the community. Jonas’s father went before the committee to plead on the baby’s behalf. A baby would normally be labeled "Inadequate" (42) and released if, like Gabriel, he was growing slowly and struggling to sleep through the night. Jonas and his family members had to pledge that they won’t get attached to Gabriel and will not protest when he is assigned to another family. Jonas hopes that Gabriel eventually gets to live with another family because that way he’ll still see the child from time to time. People who are released are “sent Elsewhere and never returned to the community” (43).

During the Ceremony of One, the audience gets stirred up about a newchild named Caleb. He is a replacement for a 4-year-old named Caleb who was “lost” (44)in the river. Losing a child is an extremely rare occurrence in this safe community that carefully watches over its young members. When the first Caleb was lost, there was a ceremony where the community’s citizens murmured his name throughout the day, saying it more softly and less often as the hours went by. In doing this, the boy “seemed to fade away gradually from everyone’s consciousness” (44). As the new Caleb is introduced, the community murmurs his name more loudly and frequently. A young Roberto is introduced as well, but he does not receive a murmuring ceremony. The old Roberto was released, not lost, so the young one is not considered a replacement.

The narrator notes that children’s transgressions—even small ones—reflect negatively on their parents, suggesting that the parents have provided inadequate guidance. They also disrupt “the community’s sense of order and success” (46). Asher tells Jonas a story about the ultimate transgression: escaping the community. He says there was once a boy who swam across the river, to another community, because he was so upset with the job assignment he received at the Ceremony of Twelve. He never returned, and there was no Ceremony of Release. Jonas thinks this story is false, but Asher’s mother says that someone did leave the community and never returned. People may also “apply for Elsewhere and be released” (48)if they do not fit in. Jonas wonders how someone might not fit in. There is such a high degree of order and careful decision-making in the community, especially concerning things such as the assignment of spouses. He is confident that the elders will choose the right job for him—and even for Asher.