Summer Reading Reaction

I have read The Giver by Lois Lowry for summer reading.

I chose this book because I had been interested in it
since I saw my friends were reading it for ELP-like class at ICU high school.
Since those friends were at higher leveled class than mine,
I had thought that it must be too difficult for me to read.
However this time, The Giver was on the list of recommended books,
so I decided to read it .


The main character of this story is twenty year-old boy whose name is Jonas.
He had lived in the world called community where everything was completely controlled.
There were no hunger, conflict, and pain but at the same time,
people did not know pleasure, love, color, and music
because the community had decided to eliminate those emotional things
to make world peace long time ago.
Since then, people had been taking pills to kill desire.
Also, there had been the system called "release" which made
fully-lived old persons and people who could not fit into the community go out.

One day, Jonas was chosen to be the Receiver of memory
who should have all the memories of  human history including emotions
alone in the whole community.
He started to take training to be the Receiver
by the old man with those memories named the Giver.
Jonas received memories and studied both happiness and pain little by little.
The more emotions he learned, the stronger he believed that people must share them.
He thought that the world with love and other feelings was better than his world now
even he knew that feelings are sometimes painful and cause tragedy.
Therefore he decided to go out of the community to change there
by spreading memories among people, but it meant that he could never come back.
He carried out the plan, and traveled long distances out of the community
through harsh environment searching for the new place where he could live with love.


I was impressed by two parts of this story.
One is the scene about "release".
The world had had the system to "release" the people who were unsuitable for the society
from there, but Jonas found that the government had killed them in fact.
It is terrifying that government controls who will die
even most people can live perfectly healthy.
Moreover, the fact that people did not know what "release" really was and accepted it
is scary too.
I am afraid that it might be realized in our world if science keeps developing rapidly.
Controlling life by science can occur the things like that.

The other of my favorite part is the ending.
I thought that we can read that part in two ways.
The author wrote that Jonas found the new place with hope at the end of his long journey,
but it is not explained certainly whether he really did it or not.
The sentences at that part can be read as that he just saw the happy illusion
before he died of the exhaustion and coldness.
It is very interesting. 


This book is not only exciting as SF, but also make us think about
what the peace is and what the feeling is for human.
I recommend you to read it at least once if you have never read it yet.