Chapter One
âSeeing Beyondâ
Memory, Forgetting, and Ethics in Lois Lowryâs The Giver
If there is one book that has rivaled Mark Twainâs Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the most frequently taught literary text in the American school-room, it may be Lois Lowryâs dystopic childrenâs novel, The Giver. Published in 1993, this story of a boyâs act resistance against a futuristic totalitarian society became an instant bestseller; soon thereafter, it collected a number of literary prizes, including the Newbery Medal and the American Library Associationâs prize for the best book for young adults of that year. Praised by reviewers and educators for the directness and simplicity of its style and the richness of its characterization, The Giver soon became a main staple in middle school reading curricula, where it has remained a solid presence (Hipple and Maupin 40â41). Decades after its publication, readers continue to find Lowryâs depiction of a dystopic society especially convincing, praising the manner in which her vision of this brave new world âforces us to question values taken for granted and to reexamine our beliefsâ (Bushman 80). The novel has also garnered a great deal of attention from scholars of childrenâs literature, who both praise and question its political significance. Indeed, like many complex and particularly memorable childrenâs novels (including the aforementioned Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), The Giver has been subject to intense scholarly debate. On the one hand, readers like Carrie Hintz have praised the manner in which it âseriously portray[s] dissent for younger audiences and make[s] it clear that young people should be integrated into political lifeâ (263). On the other hand, more skeptical readers like Susan Stewart have argued that it âfails to address alterity, reinforces cultural continuity, and actually diminishes opportunities to think in terms of difference because of its overriding humanist impetusâ (26). Although its implications may remain contested, The Giverâs persistent presence within scholarly conversation, as well as its continued insertion into various teaching curricula,1 has assured its sustained popularity. In fact, since its publication, Lowryâs novel has been named one of the 100 best books for children, and it has inspired art exhibitions, stage adaptations, and even a Tai Chi ballet (Silvey 147).2
If, nearly two decades after its publication, The Giver has continued to grip young and older readers alike, this may be because it addresses a topic that particularly intrigues the contemporary Western imagination: the question of memory. After all, the novel depicts a totalitarian society which derives its power precisely from the near-obliteration of collective memoryâand its denouement involves its protagonistâs scandalous dissemination of memories that were intended by the community to remain secret. Not insignificantly, The Giverâs publication was coterminous with greater cultural efforts to simultaneously archive and disseminate the memories of dying generations. It may not be entirely coincidental, for example, that Lowryâs novel was published in the same year that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC first opened its doors with the express purpose of reinserting into the collective consciousness the memory of one of the bitterest moments in human history. Nor is it insignificant that, in the twenty-odd years preceding The Giverâs publication, literary and filmic worksâranging from Alex Haleyâs Roots and its 1977 television adaptation to Roland JoffĂ©âs film The Killing Fields (1984) to Steven Spielbergâs more recent film Schindlerâs List (1993)âstrove to impress upon contemporary audiences the necessity of remembering traumatic historical events and injustices that they might otherwise just as soon forget. Although these works (and other similar dramas) were intended for the mass consumption of audiences from various racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds, and although their historical settings were often unfamiliar to contemporary readers or spectators, they nevertheless strove to elicit deeply personal responses from discrete individuals. Clearly, these texts were successful in their endeavor. For example, the television adaptation of Roots not only reached viewers from around the globe, but also motivated many to construct their own family genealogies. Likewise, The Killing Fields and Schindlerâs List inspired great interest in the Cambodian genocide and the Holocaust, respectivelyâeven in those whose family members were not affected by these historical traumas. Coincident with these new literary and filmic depictions of mass trauma was the emergence of the slogan, âNever Again,â which, although it was initially coined to further Holocaust remembrance, has since been adopted by survivors of other instances of mass trauma, as well as by protestors of civil and human rights abuses. If this slogan has become something of a clichĂ©âand one whose warning unfortunately is not often heededâeven its well-worn use testifies to a new and urgent cultural trend of acknowledging the traumatic past and internalizing its lessons. It is not surprising, then, that The Giver should be published and widely acclaimed at the precise moment this movement toward remembrance began to reach its peak. Indeed, Lowryâs story of a single boyâs defiance of an amnesiac, totalitarian society might even be read as an allegorical illustration of Milan Kunderaâs oft-cited statement3 that the âstruggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgettingâ (4).
It is not surprising, as well, that The Giver should join the ranks of scores of childrenâs novels published with the intention of impressing upon the minds of young people the value of remembering the traumatic past. In fact, Lowryâs fantastical story of resistance was immediately preceded by her first Newbery-award winning novel, Number the Stars (1989), which depicts a Danish girlâs attempt to protect her Jewish best friend from her Nazi oppressors. Number the Stars itself added to an increasingly growing list of childrenâs books seeking to teach children about the Holocaustâa list that includes such renowned titles as Doris Orgelâs The Devil in Vienna (1978) and Jane Yolenâs much-celebrated The Devilâs Arithmetic (1988). Moreover, other childrenâs texts, such as Eleanor Coerrâs Sadoko and the Thousand Paper Cranes (1977), Esther Hautzigâs The Endless Steppe (1987), Adam Bagdasarianâs Forgotten Fire (2000), have sought to kindle the memory of such traumatic historical events as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stalinist efforts at âdekulakization,â and the Armenian genocide, respectively. Like contemporaneous texts intended for adult audiences, these childrenâs books have not shied away from confronting their readers with depictions of a violent past, nor have they refrained from insisting upon readersâ responsibility to commit to memory their difficult subjects. In this way, The Giver, whose fabulous, futuristic setting nevertheless uncannily resembles sites of actual, historical traumasâranging from Nazi Germany to Stalinist-era Soviet Union to even the McCarthy-era U.S. â rearticulates a plea for collective remembrance of major catastrophes that is already familiar to young readers.
However, even as The Giver reiterates a general call for remembrance, it also gives expression to a certain cultural anxiety about memoryâs shadowy twin, forgetting. Indeed, as Kunderaâs maxim makes clear, the will to remember past injustices always entails a struggle against forgettingâa struggle whose outcome is as ambiguous as that of a solitary individualâs quest to resist power. By now, it has become commonplace to argue that, in an information age driven by a collective desire for the newest stories and the most novel experiences, the past is steadily being swept away into the dustbin of history. For example, in a meditation upon Paul Kleeâs painting âAngelus Novus,â Walter Benjamin imagines the âangel of historyâ as a figure helplessly blown into the future by the âstormâ of âprogress,â thwarted in his desire to redeem and âmake wholeâ the âwreckageâ of the past (âThesesâ 257â258). More recently, French historian Pierre Nora has argued that memory has been overtaken by an âacceleration of historyâ; additionally, he has maintained that we âspeak so much of memory because there is so little of it leftâ (7). Moreover, contemporary scholars have warned that even attempts to resuscitate the past do not necessarily guarantee its survival within the present. For example, in her study of Holocaust poetry, Susan Gubar makes the counterintuitive claim that âthe Holocaust is dyingâ even as historians, artists, writers, filmmakers, and witnesses try to keep its memory alive (1). According to Gubar, the âdyingâ of the Holocaust is evident not only in the inevitable aging of its very youngest witnesses, but in the proliferation of âTV programs and bestselling novels, fictionalized biographies and popularized filmsâ that âjeopardize . . . that history by commodifying or fetishizing events that continue to recede further from viewâ (5).
Given the warnings of Benjamin, Nora, and Gubarâwhose respective writings on the past are each motivated by different and often conflicting theoretical and political concerns4âone might well wonder whether con-temporary Western society bears a greater resemblance to Lowryâs amnesiac community than might be desired. Like this society, which makes occasional, superficial appeals to the past only in an effort to inoculate itself against it, our own appears to relegate memories of the traumatic past to easily consumable but ultimately extrinsic narratives. Thus, although readers often cite the ambiguity surrounding the survival of the novelâs protagonist as one of the most fascinating aspects of Lowryâs novel, it may be the survival of memory itself that constitutes the textâs most intriguing theme. At the heart of this novel is one of the most pressing questions of the latter century: is it possible, in contemporary Western society, to sustain the memory of the past, or has our culture instead become one of forgetting?
To complicate this question further, The Giver introduces the problem of second-generation memory. Initially, its protagonist, Jonas, is as ignorant of the past as are his fellow community members. However, once Jonas is chosen to become the protĂ©gĂ© of a mysterious stranger he knows only as the Giver, he becomes privy to secrets of the past that were once withheld from him. As the Giver gradually bestows upon Jonas the repressed memories of the community, Lowryâs young protagonist finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish these shared memories from those that constitute his own, personal mnemonic repertoire. Moreover, he becomes gradually more impatient with his fellow citizensâ profound ignorance of the past, especially when he recognizes that their ignorance allows them to sustain an unjust system of power. Although the setting of Lowryâs novel is clearly fabulous, its depiction of a childâs inheritance of unexperienced memories nevertheless bears a striking resemblance to accounts of actual, living children who claim to have assimilated their living forebearsâ memories of past traumas. Jonasâs story, it turns out, is not unlike those narratives offered by children of Holocaust survivors or descendants of victims of racial hate crimes in America. Thus, inasmuch as The Giver has come to be considered as an allegory of twentieth-century instances of repression and resistance, it may also be read as a fable of second-generation memory.
As a fable of second-generation memory, Lowryâs novel provides insight into the processes by which this order of memory functions. Not only does its development of Jonasâs relationship with the Giver delineate the necessarily intergenerational aspect of second-generation memory, but its depiction of this relationship as an intimate and radically physical oneâthe Giver may only transmit his memories to Jonas through a process of laying-on-of-handsâalso suggests that this phenomenon is as viscerally felt as it is intellectually experienced. Moreover, and perhaps most crucially, by situating its protagonist within a fantastical community whose crisis of memory uncannily resembles that of our own contemporary moment, The Giver suggests that second-generation memory is at once a consequence of and a possible response to this present crisis. On the one hand, the novel illustrates Noraâs claim that, in the wake of the disappearance of âlivedâ collective memory, individuals take upon themselves the duty to bear the memory of a past that once was communally shared. On the other hand, however, it posits that these same individuals occupy an ethical position that prompts them to return memory to the collective in such a way that fosters social change.
Memory against Forgetting
As Michael Levy argues, the setting of The Giver may be characterized as an âambiguous utopiaâ (52). At the outset of the novel, Jonasâs community appears attractive: indeed, it is reminiscent of earlier (and equally problematic) visions of utopia, including Platoâs Republic.5 However, as the narrative progresses, this society is gradually revealed to be dark and suspect. If the Communityâwhose generic name is always ominously capitalized within the narrativeâdoes not immediately appear to be threatening, this may be because, as Levy notes, it is âenormously seductiveâ (52). In this alternate world, conflicts of gender, race, ethnicity, and class appear to have been overcome. For example, Jonasâs mother confidently assumes her responsibilities as a judge, a role that traditionally has been considered a male occupation, even as his father is content with nurturing infants in the communityâs nursery. Although Jonasâs neighbors bear such ethnically marked names as Andrei, Michiko, Roberto, and Fiona, there appears to be no ethnic or racial strife between any individuals or groups residing in the Community. Domestic strife is happily missing as well: families reunite for daily meals to discuss their dreams and anxieties and to exchange the news of the day. What may be most attractive about this society, howeverâand especially so for Lowryâs pre-adolescent and adolescent readersâis that no pressure is placed on the Communityâs children to discern their vocations, because a group of Elders assigns jobs to each according to his or her scrupulously observed abilities.
However, if the reader is initially seduced by this apparently utopian community, she soon learns that it is not what it appears to be. Jonasâs parents might well take on non-traditional gender roles in their respective professions, but gender inequality still persists. Just as in Margaret Atwoodâs dystopic novel The Handmaidâs Tale6 (1985), the Communityâs population is sustained by the conscription of young girls to serve as birth mothers; once they have fulfilled their obligations, which are clearly viewed as unenviable by their fellow citizens, these mothers are separated from their offspring and sold into hard labor. Similarly, as healthily multicultural as the Community might initially appear, it is gradually revealed to be oppressively homogenous: despite the international flavor of the citizensâ names, all are all white and all are committed to a prevailing ideology of âSamenessâ7 (94â95). Even the idyllic character of family life is ultimately a sham, as marital relationships are revealed to be perfunctory and unerotic and as family conversations are exposed as scripted exchanges performed for the benefit of the Big Brotherâlike Community elders who listen in through two-way intercoms.
The most troubling aspect of this ambiguously utopian society, however, is its utter lack of memory. Certainly, the Community has something that resembles a history, as Jonasâs mother makes clear when she tells him that there exists a âHall of Open Recordsâ where citizens âcould go . . . if we wanted toâ (17). Indeed, it even possesses something that resembles a collective short-term memory: for example, during an annual ceremony marking older childrenâs rite of passage into adulthood, citizens are fond of discussing earlier ceremonies or remarking upon the past foibles of their now-rehabilitated youth. However, this collective memory, such that it is, is ultimately myopic. Jonasâs fellow citizens are totally unconcerned by the question of how their society was founded in the first place or what conflicts or struggles might have preceded and in fact given rise to their present state. Initially, even this arrangement is strangely seductive, because the possibility of a lack of deep collective memory promises a life untroubled by knowledge of war, famine, genocide, and other undesirable experiences. As Lowryâs narrative takes pains to demonstrate, however, such willed amnesia comes at a dreadful cost. Precisely because Jonasâs Community happily refrains from delving into its past, it remains equally uncritical of its present condition, which involves a program of eugenics, the systematic practice of euthanasia, and the maintenance of a subtly tyrannical oligarchy. In case this point might be lost on readers, Lowryâs narrative drives it home by revealing that the Communityâs voluntary ignorance of the past has resulted in its membersâ inability to see colors. As in Gary Rossâs 1998 film Pleasantville, the trope of communal color-blindness here signals a superficial and uncritical world-view.8
Like other dystopian novelsâfor example, M. T. Andersonâs National Book Award-winning young adult (YA) novel Feed (2004)âThe Giver draws on contemporary anxieties in order to complicate its setting and plot.9 Indeed, Lowryâs vision of a community without memory is strikingly consonant with Pierre Noraâs argument that Western society has steadily lost its capacity for collective memory. Memory, Nora argues, has been all but obliterated by an âacceleration of historyâ (8). If there is still a will to preserve the past within the present, Nora maintains, it is articulated through a profoundly historical, rather than mnemonic, sensibility: history treats the past as though it âis no longerâ and thus subjects traces of the past to highly systematized processes of analysis, criticism, and quantification, as though the past were a cadaver to be probed and dissected10 (8). History condemns the past to enclosed, private spaces such as classrooms or museumsâor, as it were, to seldom-visited Halls of Open Records such as the one found in Jonasâs Communityâand, in so doing, it gradually removes the past from collective consciousness. âHistoryâs goal and ambition,â Nora continues, âis not to exalt but to annihilate what has in reality taken placeâ (9). In the wake of such a clinical âannihilation,â memoryâor what Nora calls the âlived experienceâ of the past within the presentâcan no longer thrive. It is hardly possible, he explains, for large collectives to share gestures and habits that continually bind them to, and remind them of, a commonly shared past. If âtrue,â spontaneous memory still exists, Nora posits, it does so only in small and increasingly isolated pockets of society, such as Orthodox Jewish communities in which quotidian reflexive rituals marry the ancient past to an âeternal presentâ (8).
Although Noraâs grim diagnosis of memoryâs fate is more widely appreciated in his native France, where it inspired a three-volume study of French memory commissioned by then-Prime Minister Francois Mitterand, other, similar, evaluations of the current condition of memory may be more readily recognizable to American audiences. For example, in his popular study of electronic culture, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985), Neil Postman argues that the continuous stream of news stories on television and radio (and now, on the Internet) renders individual reports indistinguishable from one another. According to Postman, televisionâand especially broadcast newsâallows for a ânow . . . thisâ mode of consciousness in which information is disseminated in small, discrete fragments followed by other, quite unrelated fragments, so that âevents stand alone, stripped of any connection to the past, or to the future, or to other eventsâ and âall assumptions of coherence have vanishedâ (110). Such a prevailing dynamic, he argues, not only makes possible a culture of forgetfulness but also enables the paralysis of viewersâ critical capacities. Contemporary audiencesâand, one might add, contemporary users of the Internetâare suspended in an eternal present, albeit one that is nearly evacuated of memory.
Similarly, Barbie Zelizer argues that even practices intended to sustain the past within collective memory ultimately result in its swift forgetting. In her study of mechanically reproduced images of atrocity...