The Giver Chapters 9-12

As a continuation of what we read last week, The Giver has become a really interesting book, during this few chapters Jonas got an introduction to what his job as being the receiver will be. He learned that he would be able to lie and many more things that he wasn’t able to do before, he also learned that he would feel pain in his training to become the receiver. In his first day of training he met the receiver. He is an old person that is very wise. He will be in charge of teaching Jonas to learn about the community’s memories and its past. For example, the receiver told Jonas that before they had sunshine. Jonas didn’t know what it was; he also got a sun burn that symbolised the pain that he will feel in his training.

As I was reading these chapters I found a quote that really stood out to me:

“I don’t know what you mean when you say ‘the whole world’ or ‘generations before him,’ I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.”

Why doesn’t Jonas and his community know about the past? Why do they don’t learn about the past and the rest of communities? Is this why they can’t talk about the previous receiver of memories? I think that Jonas community is a really closed community that doesn’t know about the rest of the world. While I was reading this phrase I thought that maybe Jonas community live under a dome that’s why they are able to control the climate and that why they don’t know about the rest of the world.

I think that these chapters were the most interesting ones because the author is starting to give more clues about what will Jonas learn in the future.  I also think that now we are starting to get more the theme of the importance of memories. To learn more about what will happen in the rest of the book keep on reading this blog every week.