The Final Journey

What I read:
Its been almost a year since Jonas started his training.  On the day in which his father says that he will release a twin baby, Jonas goes to the Giver and they both watch the release happening.  While Jonas watches the tape, he sees that one of the babies is injected with something lethal.  He realizes that being released actualy means getting killed.  He feels horrified at what his father does at work. He never knew about it before.





Jonas realizes that Gabriel will be released also.  The Giver and Jonas create a plan so that Jonas and Gabriel can escape and leave the community forever.  Jonas sneeks out of his house during the night with Gabriel.  The journey is very difficult.  There are long roads on his bicicle, long walking distances, and weather problems.  Finally Jonas sees a bunch of lights in the distance.  Next to him there is a red sled.  He gets on the sled with Gabriel and they ride down towards the lights.

What I thought about:
"The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain.  It's the loneliness of it.  Memories need to be shared" (154).

The quote struck me because its actually true because the Giver kept those memories for 10 years.  Now Jonas and Gabe will have those memories until they die unless they share them.  The loneliness is because for a long time they don't have anybody to share happy memories with.  When I can't share happy memories, it feels like I can't express my feelings.  So its really hard for me to think of what it would be like for the Giver to never be able to share.



"Listen to me, Jonas.  they can't help it.  They know nothing... It's the way they live.  It's the life that was created for them.  It's the same life that you would have, if you had not been chosen as my successor " (153).  


This is something that the Giver tells Jonas when Jonas cries after seeing his father kill an innocent baby.  The giver reminds Jonas that its not really their fault that they murder people because they are ignorant.  Its hard to think about what they people do and now how to feel about it.  One the one hand, they are killing inocent children and other people which is totally unfair and horrible.  On the other hand, they don't even know what they are doing so its sort of hard to blame them, although you can feel hatred towards them.

What I conclude:
Its hard to know to know exactly what happens at the end of the book.  We don't know if that is actually a town that Jonas sees or if it is an illusion.  When I first finished the book, I thought that he actually reaches the town, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am about it.  I think that's why this is such a good book.  You can debate it with people.

I also think that this is a good book because I can think about that their distopian world and our world can be similar and different in many ways.  Its really difficult to decide if a society that is so peaceful like theirs is actually better than ours knowing that they still do things like kill people unfairly.  It makes me wonder if its better to no know what's going on, or to know the truth.

All and all, I really liked this book a lot.  I recommend it to people who like to think and compare and contrast.  One of my favorite parts was when Jonas starts to se color and the apple.  Its exciting to read that and not really know what he sees, but know that something cool is about ti happen.

Dark Memories

What I read:
Jonas continues his training with the Giver.  He starts getting darker memories past on to him.  For example, the last horrible memory that he gets is been the middle of a war with thousands of soldiers dead or wounded.  In a different memory, he also breaks his leg when riding down on a sled.  

Jonas and the whole community have a free day because its a holiday.  One that day Jonas goes to find Asher.  He finds his friend in the meadows playing war.  When Jonas walks into the middle of the "battle field" Jonas's friends points an imaginary gun at him and start shooting him.  This reminds Jonas of the horrific memory of the real war that he has seen.  When Jonas asks them to stop playing war, Asher gets upset because he doens't understand how bad war really is.  Fiona tries to cheer Jonas, but instead Jonas goes to the Giver.  Jonas talks to the Giver about love.  The Giver tells Jonas the story of what happened to the last failed receiver before Jonas.  Her name was Rosemary.  Rosemary did the same training as Jonas but when she got her first dark memory, she asked for release.  She never came back.








Something else very important that happens in these chapters in that one night Gabe sleeps in Jonas's room.  When Gabe wakes up Jonas goes to his crib to calm him down.  Jonas starts patting and rubbing his back.  Then a memory comes to Jonas and he suddenly losses it.  He realizes that he has past it on to Gabe by accident. 







What I thought about:
"They have never known pain, he thought.  The realization made him feel desperately lonely, and he rubbed his throbbing leg.  He eventually slept.  Again and again he dreamed of the anguish and the isolation on the forsaken hill" (110).

Pain is obviouslly negative.  No one likes pain.  But its important to think about how pain can make us learn.  Without pain there wouldn't be relief.  Without pain you can't really know what comfort is just like without night night you can't really know what day is.  This quote is important because when Jonas learns about war and pain, he basically starts to lose his friends.  That's because he feels so alone and isolated from other the rest of the community because he feels like he can't express himself. He can't tell them what he really things and feels.





"Jonas started at them.  Meaningless?  He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory" (126-127).


This memory is about love.  Jonas asks his father "Do you love me?"  The father's response is that he shouldn't say that word because its meaningless.  Jonas realizes that nobody in his community knows that love is.  I think that this is shocking because how do you get married when you're not in love?  More importantly, parents can't tell their children that they love them because they don't even have love.  Its sad to think about a world with no love in it.




What I conclude:

This book has changes a lot since the beginning.  At first the society looks well organized and like a nice place to life.  But now we realize that everyone is color blind, there's no love, and there's no real families, since there can only be four members in each family and no one has grandparents, or even know what grandparents are.  While it would be great to live in a world without war, it would be hard to live in a world with no real families and with no love at all.  

The New Receiver

What I read:

Finally its Jonas's Ceremony of twelve.  He sees his friends get assigned, but instead of finding out his position, the community skips him and go on to the next person.  Everybody is surprised and confused by that.  At the end of the ceremony, Jonas is given his assignment as the Receiver of Memories.  He doesn't really know what that means at first.  When he reads the rules, he is surprised about the last one, which says "You may lie.".





On his first day of training, he meets an old man who was the Receiver and is now the Giver.  To start of, the Giver tells Jonas to lie down on a bed.  When Jonas feels the Giver's hands on his back, the Giver passes on a memory to Jonas.  The memory is of riding on a sled down a snowy hill.  Then Jonas learns about what his training will be, which is having memories past on to him.  He figures out that people in the community don't have memories of their own and that there is a much bigger world out there.  When he asks the Giver why everyone cant have memories of their own, he learns that its because there are some positive memories, but there are negative ones also.  For example one of Jonas's first memories is how nice the sun feels.  Then he is given another memory about getting a sunburn that hurts lot.



What I thought about:
"Thank you for your childhood" (56).
This is the line that is said to everybody in the Ceremony of twelve right after they receive their assignment.  This line strikes me because everybody in the ceremony is turning twelve and there already finishing their childhood.  In my opinion, acting like an adult when you're twelve sounds shocking and impossible to actual do.  Once this line is said, to me it felt like everybody that turns twelve can't be a child anymore and ha to live up to expectations and responsibility.

"He had never, within his memory, been tempted to lie... Now Jonas had a thought that he had never had before.  This new thought was frightening.  What if other - adults- had, upon becoming Twelves, received in their instructions the same sentence?  What if they had all beeb instructed: You may lie?" (71).

When Jonas starts thinking about telling lies and telling the truth, he starts wondering if everyone he knows is telling lies.  If they are, then what Jonas understands about his community turns out to be a lie, too.  He also starts thinking that the world is no what he thinks it is.

What I conclude:
As Jonas starts realizing the truths about the world, it reminds me that it is also hard to know what the world is really like.  This is a difficult lesson for Jonas to learn because he already leaned about some wonders of the real world and some hardships.  Life is like this too.  As we grow up we change opinions, ideas, and view points.  Its not always easy to accept changes for anyone, and it doesn't seem like it will be easy for Jonas either.