Summary
“There’s nothing we can do. It’s always
been this way.”
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Jonas explains that he is curious about release because
his father released a newchild that day. The Giver says that he
wishes that newchildren were not released, and Jonas reminds him
that it would be confusing to have two identical people walking
around. The Giver tells Jonas that, as Receiver, he is allowed to
have access to any information he wants and that if he wants to
watch a release, he can. Since all private ceremonies are
recorded, Jonas can even watch his father’s release of the newchild
that morning. Jonas agrees to watch it, and the Giver calls the
recording up on a video screen. Jonas watches as his father weighs
the twins, then gently injects something into a vein in the smaller
one’s head. The newchild twitches and lies still,
and Jonas realizes that it is dead. He recognizes the gestures and
posture of the boy that he saw die on the battlefield. Horrified,
he watches his father place the body in a garbage chute and wave
goodbye. The Giver tells Jonas that he watched the recording of
Rosemary’s release. She had been told to roll up her sleeve, but
she chose to inject herself.
Jonas is overcome by pain and horror when he realizes
what release really is. He starts crying and refuses to go home
to his family, knowing that his father lied to him about what would
happen to the newchild. He cannot believe that his friend Fiona
efficiently kills the Old when they are released. The Giver allows
Jonas to spend the night with him and tries to explain that the
people of his community do not feel things the way that he and Jonas
do. He tells Jonas that Jonas has helped him to decide that things
have to change, that the memories have to be shared.
The Giver and Jonas come up with a plan: Jonas will escape
from the community, leaving all his memories for the people of the
community. Jonas begs the Giver to come with him, but the Giver explains
that someone needs to stay to help the others deal with those memories,
or the community will be thrown into utter chaos. Jonas says that
he does not want to care about the other people, but he knows that
the only reason he and the Giver devised the plan is because they
do care about the others. The Giver tells Jonas that he himself
is too weak to make the journey anyway. He cannot even see colors
anymore. Jonas asks the Giver about his early experiences with
seeing beyond, how they were different from Jonas’s own, and the
Giver tells him that he heard beyond. He heard music, something
Jonas would not understand because the Giver has kept music to himself.
For the next two weeks, the Giver plans to transmit memories
of courage and strength to help Jonas with his journey. At midnight
on the night before the Ceremony, Jonas will slip out of his house
with an extra set of clothing, which he will hide by the riverbank
next to his bicycle. The next day, the Giver will order
a vehicle for a visit to another community, hide Jonas in the storage
area, and give him a head start on his journey to Elsewhere. The
Giver will tell the community that Jonas has been lost in the river,
they will perform the Ceremony of Loss, and he will help them bear
Jonas’s memories. The Giver tells Jonas that afterward, he will
be with his daughter, Rosemary.
Analysis
When Jonas finally understands that his father killed
the newchild when he released it, we understand why he is horrified,
feeling that his father has betrayed his trust. As readers, we feel
along with Jonas that his community is cruel to condone the murder
of children and the Old. However, the death of the infant seems
infinitely more horrific to Jonas than it would to almost anyone
else who lived in his community: Jonas and the Giver are the only
people who know what death really means. Jonas is horrified because
the movements of the dying baby echo the movements of the dying
boy in the memory, and he associates those movements with pain,
thirst, and misery. If Lily or Asher or even Fiona were to see the
death throes of the baby, they might not understand what the baby
is feeling—and in fact the baby probably does not feel much when
it dies, since Jonas’s father is so gentle. But a year’s worth of
transmitted memories have taught Jonas to think of death as we think
of death—something horrible to be avoided at all costs.
Jonas’s unequivocal disgust at the baby’s death must be
heightened by the fact that there is no good reason to eliminate
the baby, except that it looks too much like its brother: the baby’s
life would not have been extremely difficult, nor would it have
put his brother’s life in danger. It just would have made life a
little bit more inconvenient for the members of the community. Jonas
does not recoil at the baby’s death just because he senses that
it is in pain. He has also grown to understand the worth of an individual
human being as well as how humans in the past struggled to preserve
life in the face of war, sickness, and natural disasters. It disgusts
him to see his father throwing away the precious uniqueness that
the baby probably has to offer, and the casual nature of his death
seems like an insult to all of the people who have struggled so
hard to survive.
