722 Lowry, Lois
Family in The Giver
In the futuristic world that Lois Lowry creates for
her novel, The Giver, the family is a very specifi-
cally defined unit consisting of a father, mother, one
daughter, and one son. The family structure is care-
fully governed by the community, which allows no
exceptions to be made to the standard family unit.
While this type of nuclear family may be familiar,
and even attractive, to an American audience, it also
takes choice and variety out of society. As the novel
progresses, it becomes revealed that the family in
Jonas’s community is a fabricated, and rather mean-
ingless, construction.
Families in Jonas’s world are not created by
mutual choice; instead, all the decisions regarding
the family are made by a group of Elders. When
members of the community come of age, they are
permitted to apply for a spouse; however, they are
not allowed to choose one based on feelings of
love or affection. A committee of Elders makes the
decision for the couple, weighing their individual
strengths and weaknesses for an optimal combina-
tion. After three years of observation, the couple is
allowed to apply for the first of their two children.
Again, the infant is chosen by the Elders and
delivered into the family unit in a special annual
ceremony. When the family is ready, another child
(always the opposite gender of its sibling) is applied
for and placed. Older adults who have completed
their family raising go and live in the House of
Childless Adults.
Even the day to day aspects of family life are
highly structured and uniform throughout the entire
community. Many of the activities are ritualized,
such as the sharing of feelings and dreams. Dis-
turbingly, these activities are also a way in which to
monitor behavior and ensure that the community
rules are followed. After sharing a dream that hints
at his emerging sexuality, Jonas is promptly given a
pill that suppresses these feelings. Here, the family
unit is acting as the enforcer of the larger com-
munity standards, illuminating that the family is,
indeed, just a smaller version of the outer commu-
nity and that there is no safe haven from rules and
regulations.
As Jonas begins to receive memories from the
Giver that offer a different view of family life, he
realizes that one important element is missing
from this type of family: love. Love is not a driving
force for the joining of spouses and the rearing of
children. Rather, joining together to raise children
is portrayed as a duty to the community. Even the
process of birth is mechanized, with the result that
parents and siblings do not have a biological link
to each other. Children are genetically engineered
and created anonymously through Birthmothers,
which creates an absence of blood kinship ties. Yet
it is not the artificial creation of the family that
bothers Jonas, but the lack of feeling that he finds
in the family unit. As Jonas’s mother tells him, the
word “love” has become “a very generalized word,
so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete.”
As she goes on to explain, parents feel pride and
enjoyment, but not love, for their children. The
hollowness of this structure, and the insubstantial
bonds it creates, can be illustrated by the lack of
extended family in the community. Once children
are grown, they move away from their parents and
rarely, if ever, interact with them again. There are
no family celebrations where aunts, uncles, cousins,
and grandparents join together and share their
lives; in short, there is no depth of emotion tying
people together. Beyond childrearing and rule
indoctrination, the family seems to offer no other
benefit to the people.
Jonas decides to leave the community because,
without love, he finds no meaning in life. He under-
goes a painful realization that his family and peers
can never feel the same way he can because they
do not experience deep emotion. The uniform and
cautious way the community has chosen to create
families leaves them cold and empty. Even though
in American culture, the combination of father,
mother, son, and daughter is often idealized, it is not
compulsory—people can choose the ways in which
they create their families. When Jonas flees the
community, he takes Gabriel, a toddler his family
has temporarily been caring for, with him. With this
action, Jonas is symbolically creating his own family;
he rebels against the control and uniformity of his
past life. What this seems to suggest is that families
can combine in many different ways, as long as there
is the bond of love.
Cheryl Blake Price