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.
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