Can anyone tell me what was the book The Giver Was about?

Question

Just asking beacuse i need 2 no 4 school

Answer 1

Click link below
http://www2.franciscan.edu/webquests/thegiver/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver
The Giver is a soft science fiction novel written by Lois Lowry and published on April 16, 1993. It is set in a future society which is at first presented as a utopia and gradually appears more and more dystopic. The novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth year of his life. Jonas' society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to "Sameness", a move which has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the position of "Receiver of Memory," the person who stores all the memories of the time before Sameness, in case they are ever needed. As Jonas receives the memories from his predecessor—the Giver—he discovers how shallow his community's life has become.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0440237688/002-6828633-7284001?v=glance&n=283155
Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
In a world with no poverty, no crime, no sickness and no unemployment, and where every family is happy, 12-year-old Jonas is chosen to be the community's Receiver of Memories. Under the tutelage of the Elders and an old man known as the Giver, he discovers the disturbing truth about his utopian world and struggles against the weight of its hypocrisy. With echoes of Brave New World, in this 1994 Newbery Medal winner, Lowry examines the idea that people might freely choose to give up their humanity in order to create a more stable society. Gradually Jonas learns just how costly this ordered and pain-free society can be, and boldly decides he cannot pay the price. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
In the "ideal" world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are "released"--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also "released," but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers. Ages 12-14.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Answer 2

Go to this website and skim through this..

http://www.bookrags.com/notes/giv/SUM.htm

But the other girl is right u know.. u won*t understand what the whole book is about unless you actually read it... :/ sucks huh? loL i*m jk :D Good Luck! :D

Answer 3

tells you all you need to know without actually reading the book

Answer 4

Here's a lengthy summary you can read that may help.

http://education.yahoo.com/homework_help/cliffsnotes/the_giver/

You need to read the book yourself. If you read more, you might improve your spelling as well.

Answer 5

i know what this book is about and it is pretty cool, but you have to read for yourself so you can enjoy and understand it's meanings. sorry but read it!

Answer 6

The Giver is a soft science fiction novel written by Lois Lowry and published on April 16, 1993. It is set in a future society which is at first presented as a utopia and gradually appears more and more dystopic. The novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth year of his life. Jonas' society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to "Sameness", a move which has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the position of "Receiver of Memory," the person who stores all the memories of the time before Sameness, in case they are ever needed. As Jonas receives the memories from his predecessor—the Giver—he discovers how shallow his community's life has become.

Despite controversy and criticism that the book's subject material is inappropriate for young children, The Giver won the 1994 Newbery Medal and has sold more than 3.5 million copies. In the United States, it is a part of many middle school reading lists, but it is also on many banned book lists (see Controversy). The novel forms a loose trilogy with Gathering Blue (2000) and Messenger (2004), two other books set in the same future era.

A film based on the book, titled The Giver, is currently in pre-production. The film is slated for a 2007 release date.
At first glance, the novel's setting seems to be a utopia, where all possible steps are taken to eliminate pain and anguish. Two-way speakers monitor every household for rule infractions. The people are almost always compliant; families share their dreams and feelings on a daily basis to defuse emotional buildup. This society remains harmonious by matching up husbands and wives based on personality compatibility.

Lowry describes creating the pain-free world of Jonas's Community in her Newbery speech:

I tried to make Jonas's world seem familiar, comfortable, and safe, and I tried to seduce the reader. I seduced myself along the way. It did feel good, that world. I got rid of all the things I fear and dislike; all the violence, poverty, prejudice and injustice, and I even threw in good manners as a way of life because I liked the idea of it.
One child has pointed out, in a letter, that the people in Jonas's world didn't even have to do dishes.
It was very, very tempting to leave it at that.[3]

As time progresses in the novel, however, it becomes clear that the society has lost contact with the ideas of family and love (at least in the "more complete" sense at which Lowry hints). Children are born to designated "birthmothers" and then distributed, one boy and one girl per family, in order to achieve balance in the population. After family units have served the purpose of raising the children in a stable environment, they cease to exist, the parents going to a communal housing facility for childless adults, and the children becoming involved in their work and starting monogenerational families of their own. The community maintains this process using pills which suppress emotion, mainly romantic love and human sexuality.

All the land near the community and around the other, similar towns clustered about the nearby river has been flattened to aid agriculture and transportation. Climate control is used so the weather remains constant.

The community is run by a Council of Elders that assigns each 12-year-old the job he or she will perform for the rest of his or her life. People are bound by an extensive set of rules touching every aspect of life, which if violated require a simple but somewhat ceremonious apology. In some cases, violating the rules is "winked at": older siblings invariably teach their younger brothers and sisters how to ride a bicycle before the children are officially permitted to learn the skill. If a member of the community has committed serious infractions twice before, he or she may be punished by "release", which can be seen as this future world's equivalent to death (although being sentenced for release is not defined as actually dying in the community).

The "Ceremony of Release" recurs throughout the novel, becoming more ominous as more details are revealed. Early in the story, we learn that the procedure is generally considered a shameful fate, particularly if the one released is a functioning member of society. On the other hand, Release of the elderly is an occasion of joyful celebration, and release of an infant is regarded as unavoidable to preserve balance. Later, it is learned the specific criteria for which infants—under the care of assigned Nurturers before they are assigned to families—are selected for Release. In particular, if a Birthmother produces identical twins, a Nurturer weighs them and usually Releases the smaller.

The people of Jonas' community believe that those Released are sent "elsewhere," probably to another community. As the novel nears its climax, the protagonist discovers that release is actually euthanasia. The scene which makes this revelation has drawn criticism from some adults who would rather not see children exposed to such descriptions.

The book is told from a third-person limited point of view. The protagonist, Jonas, is followed as he awaits the Ceremony of Twelve. Jonas lives in a standard family unit with his mother (a judge) and father (a "nurturer"). He is selected to be "Receiver of Memory", because of his unusual "capacity to see beyond", which is an ability to do something unusual, such as see color or hear music. He trains for the position of Receiver by receiving memories from the aged incumbent (known to the community as "the Receiver", and to Jonas as "the Giver") who is burdened by the emotional weight of the memories. These memories are images from the world before Sameness, "back and back and back"—things that no one else in Jonas's world remembers.

Through the Giver, Jonas receives memories of things eliminated from his world: violence, sadness, and loss, as well as true love, beauty, joy, adventure, and family. Eventually, these revelations prompt Jonas to seek to change the community and return emotion to the world.

The ending is ambiguous, and Jonas' future and even survival are left unresolved. See Ambiguity (below) for further discussion.
* Jonas – the protagonist, an Eleven year-old when the novel opens, who is selected to become Receiver of Memory at his Ceremony of Twelve.
* The Giver – the incumbent Receiver of Memory, who stores human experiences from the time before Sameness. The Community's Elders rely upon his "wisdom" in the event of emergencies; because no one wants the pain that comes with keeping the necessary memories, this "honor" is restricted to one individual.
* Jonas's Mother – an intelligent, practical woman who serves her Community as a judge.
* Jonas's Father – a caring man, something of the ideal father figure, who works as a nurturer for Children in their first year of life. Later, Jonas learns that his father is, sometimes, responsible for the Release of defective children.
* Lily – Jonas's talkative, enthusiastic and outgoing younger sister.
* Asher – Jonas's closest friend, a cheerful and easygoing boy who is assigned the position of Assistant Director of Recreation.
* Fiona – Female friend and coeval of both Jonas and Asher. Her red hair represents a failure of genetic engineering, as the Giver notes. "We never completely mastered Sameness [...] Hair like Fiona's must drive them crazy." She works as a Caretaker for the Old. Despite her kind demeanor, she is adept at Releasing the elderly without emotion. She also is the one whom Jonas dreams about in his "stirrings". She is also referred to as his 'favorite female'.
* Gabriel – an infant from the Nurturing Center whom Jonas's father takes home for extra care. Slow in development and highly emotional, Gabriel is at risk of Release.
* Rosemary – the Elders' previous selection to be the new Receiver of Memory, when Jonas was a Two. Her training failed, in a way which impacted the entire Community: defeated by the memories of loss and hurt which the Giver was forced to transfer, she asked for Release. Once she was "Elsewhere", the memories given her had no place to go, so they floated freely. The Giver reveals that Rosemary was his daughter.
* Caleb – A child who drowned in the river near the town. Because of release, death is not known (old people are released at a certain age), so this shocks the community. They chant his name all day until it fades from their memories.

Major themes

Color represents diversity and a depth of feeling beyond that which the majority of society enjoys. In The Giver, however, objects do not "gain" color through intense emotional experiences on the part of their observers; rather, Jonas learns to see the colors which objects intrinsically possess. Apparently, the transition to Sameness involved removing color vision from the people, although the Giver implies that genetic engineers also attempted (without total success) to remove the variability in the human population (even light eyes and red hair are rarities).

A motif of nudity recurs in several places. During his volunteer hours (a time when children aged eight to twelve explore their community and prepare for an eventual career), Jonas assists in the House of the Old, where the most aged members of the Community reside. Lowry describes how Jonas bathes an old woman, Larissa; he enjoys the trusting, carefree nature of the experience, which reminds him of his father caring for an infant. Jonas muses about how his Community has strict rules against nakedness in almost all circumstances. He personally finds them a nuisance—such as the admonition to keep oneself entirely covered while changing for athletic games—and does not understand why the Community would institute such precautions. Later, the tenderness of the bathing scene gains a sexual edge, when Jonas dreams about cajoling a female friend, the red-haired Fiona, to remove her clothes and climb into a tub so that he can bathe her. Jonas recounts this dream at his family's breakfast dream-telling, and his parents recognize it as an early sign of what they call "the stirrings" (puberty). A daily pill makes the stirrings go away.

Music plays a role in The Giver, despite its presence being very subdued. Just as it is possible to read well into the novel without realizing that its characters do not see color — often until the Giver mentions that a thing called "color" once existed — it is also easy to miss the fact that the community has no music. One of the few clues is when Larissa describes a Ceremony of Release for an old man who was leaving the Community. "We chanted the anthem," she says, a phrasing which implies an absence of melody. Later, when the Giver is instructing Jonas, we learn that as a boy, the Giver had a faculty much like Jonas's ability to "see beyond". In the Giver's case, it was hearing beyond: he began to hear "something truly remarkable, which is called music". (This sense is more mystical than Jonas's, in that we can understand how objects have color which people are unable to see, but we cannot identify a natural source of music—unless the Giver discovered he could hear musical patterns in everyday sound, as Mozart reputedly did.)