The Giver: Imagery 3 key examples

As Jonas and Asher tossed the apple back and forth, Jonas remembers, it momentarily looked different to him before turning back into the same apple it had always been. He has difficulty describing the qualities of the apple in midair. He is more specific with his imagery once the apple reverts to its "unchanged" self. He remembers how it felt once it landed in his hand, "a perfect sphere." He remembers perceiving its color as "the same nondescript shade, about the same shade as his own tunic." This language is precise in its own way, but it is nonetheless a strange way to describe the color of an apple. Apples can be any number of vibrant colors, including red, pink, yellow, and green. The classic image of an apple is usually bright red. It is possible that Jonas is wearing a bright red tunic, or a pink, yellow, or green tunic that matches the color of the apple. However, none of these colors seem very "nondescript," except in that Jonas literally has trouble describing them. Instead of naming any colors, he refers to "shades," a term used in color theory to describe varying amounts of gray. He only seems able to describe objects' color by emphasizing how dark they are compared to other objects. His vision is like a black and white film.

This passage draws the reader's attention to the fact that color has so far never come up in any of the book's descriptions. The Giver is full of imagery from the very start. In Chapter 1, for example, Jonas meditates on the sensations he is feeling to determine whether "frightened" is the right word to describe his emotion. In the midst of all this imagery, it is easy not to notice the lack of color in the book. Jonas's memory of the apple in Chapter 3 is the first moment when it becomes apparent that Jonas is missing something so vital to the human experience as color. His brief glimpse of the apple as something other than a "shade" of gray foreshadows not only the fact that he will soon learn to see color, but also that he is destined to see the world in a way that diverges from the mainstream.

The Giver is the only person in the Community who knows what it is like to carry all the memories of history. The Giver tries to use imagery to describe to Jonas the extraordinary pressure of this position. For any of Lowry's readers who have been sledding, the Giver's imagery effectively draws on remembered sensations of cold, speed, excitement, deceleration, and the atmospheric smell of snow. These readers may even remember how sledding for fun always ends with the exhausting task of trudging back uphill. Most of Lowry's readers probably also have some experience with the mixture of wonder and devastation that comes from learning about history. There is an endless amount of history to learn. Sometimes it is empowering, and sometimes it is so painful and violent that it is difficult for anyone to bear. The Giver's imagery helps readers imagine how exhilarating and excruciating it would be to be barraged with all of society's historical memories and have no one to discuss them with. And the fact that readers, like the Giver, have access to information and experiences Jonas lacks—an example of dramatic irony—underscores the unique difficulties of Jonas's role.

Jonas has never been sledding. He has never even been confronted with a historical memory. He wants to follow along with what the Giver is saying, but the imagery is lost on him. The irony of this moment is what prompts the Giver to give Jonas his first memory, a simple memory of sledding through snow. The fact that the Giver must start so small indicates just how profoundly the Community has altered the human experience for its citizens. This scene should not be mistaken for an argument that sledding is the most basic human experience and that anyone living in a climate without snow cannot be a full person. Rather, sledding represents a simple childhood experience the Community has taken away from its citizens for the sake of ease. The Community tries to keep people safe and happy, but in so doing it keeps them from experiencing both the ups and downs of the world. Jonas has a huge job cut out for him: he is to be the Giver's replacement, shouldering the weight of all the world's memories. Before he can take this task on, he must learn a whole slew of basic sensations so that he can make sense of the world he is to remember.

For the first time in his life, Jonas understands on a sensory level the difference between hunger and starvation. Hunger is a desire for food, whereas starvation is an intense, unbearable need for food that can kill a person if it goes unmet. The Community boasts that it has solved the problem of starvation by carefully managing its population and food production, keeping them perfectly in balance. Jonas now knows that "population control" means eugenics and euthanasia for the most vulnerable. Others have had to die so that he would never feel true suffering. He sees now that his and others' lack of suffering has numbed them to the full human experience. Jonas's own father has killed children like Gabriel "for the greater good" because he is desensitized to the cruelty of such an act and believes it is worth the moral cost.

Jonas feels the "gnawing, painful emptiness" inside him and realizes that contrary to what he was once told, starvation was an apt metaphor all along for what he was experiencing in the Community. He did not know it, but he was starving for color when he had black-and-white vision. He was starving for love before he ever knew it existed. He was starving for deeper feelings when he was told he would never feel them. For generations, the Community has desperately needed the very things they have shunted aside in favor of Sameness. Maintaining Sameness is killing their spirits just as surely as starvation is killing Jonas's body.