The Giver: Memory, Meaning and Belonging

One of the functions of good fiction, at least from this writer’s perspective is its ability to stir up contemplation in the minds of the reader, yet few meet this criterion. The Giver written by Lois Lowry appears to do so masterfully through its depiction of a utopian community turned dystopian.

Lois Lowry’s pathbreaking 1993 young adult novel about a utopian community is not a stranger to controversy what with critics from both ends of the political spectrum ranging from parent’s organisations challenging the book for depicting infanticide and sexuality and a progressive castigating it for not being Michael Clayton: Part Deux. Since any text that inspires such concerted outrage would have had some elements worth analysing, one would be remiss in avoiding this.

The Giver tells us the story of Jonas who comes of age in a utopian society called the Community wherein the twin ideals of social cohesion and equality of opportunity has been achieved through the creation of a non-market society. In fact, it seems to have achieved the wishes expressed in John Lennon’s Imagine:

The dreamer himself.

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people sharing all the world

But as is often the case with such patterns in the sky, they are not as pristine as they would seem from the outside. This article will attempt to examine both the construction of this society as well as analyse its components disparately. (Note: From this point on this article will contain spoilers)

A Possible Utopia?

The Community in The Giver.

The Community in The Giver has managed to solve social conflict by creating a well-integrated society without private property while evolving a consumer goods distribution which would put all existing Public Distribution Systems (PDSs) to shame. Since there is no private property, as well as a system of job allocation based on inclination alone, conflict seems a distant memory. This construction is essentially a reiteration of what Sabine had to say about Plato’s kallipolis;

“The true romance of the Republic is the romance of free intelligence, unbound by custom and untrammelled by facts .” GH Sabine in A History of Political Theory

Rather than interrogate the possibility of the Community, one must rather look at it by examining its constituent elements; the individual, the family unit and the community as a whole. In this case, it would be instructive to start from the community considering its central role in the life of its inhabitants.

The Blank State

The structure of the society is fairly egalitarian (with only a small dilution in having a gerontocratic Council of Elders deciding matters), but with equal dignity for the occupations allotted to children upon reaching their 12th year. Since everybody is even allowed an equal share of goods through a distribution department there is no conflict over the allocation of either office or object.

This society could have been easily designed by people in the Original Position in keeping with Plato’s city ruled by the philosopher-kings; there is a functional division of labour with an enlightened elite ruling over the society. Interestingly, one could also easily justify this society as reasonable according to Rawl’s principles of Justice.

An illustration of the argument from Veil of Ignorance.

First Principle: Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all; Second Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: They are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; They are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle)

Unlike Plato’s Republic, there is neither a constitutional limitation on classes holding the political office of the Elders nor is there economic inequality which prevents this from happening in actuality, thereby satisfying both (1) and (2a). The only instance of social inequality the office of the Elders is clearly justifiable since it is instituted for the benefit of the children performing jobs that suited them, thus fulfilling the difference principle (2b). We can clearly conclude that this seems just.

But how can one trust the powerful Elders to not discriminate in favour of their offspring in the choice of careers? The Community solves this by abolishing the traditional institution of the family in favour of abstract “family units” who are allotted children as a privilege by the Community.

The Abstract Family

Long before Engel’s seminal work on anthropology titled The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Plato had already made a strong case for the abolition of the family in his discussion of the communism of wives and property. He proposes the abolition of the family for two reasons to free women from the demands of child-rearing and end the possibility of an acquisitive mindset creeping into his guardian. Instead, he proposes a proto-eugenic state selected mating and a system of state stewardship over the children born from these liaisons. The Community (as expected by now) does him one better by selecting a class of women specialising in birthing children and terminating those infants who do not meet requisite standards.

Plato and Aristotle – Detail from The School of Athens by Raphael, 1510-1511.

In creating this system of stewardship over the children, Plato hopes to create a society where the guardians love all the children as their own since they do not know who their children are. But his student Aristotle clearly disputes this thesis by arguing that this scheme will destroy the basis of harmony:

Whereas in a state having women and children common, love will be watery; and the father will certainly not say ‘my son,’ or the son ‘my father.’ As a little sweet wine mingled with a great deal of water is imperceptible in the mixture, so, in this sort of community, the idea of relationship which is based upon these names will be lost; there is no reason why the so-called father should care about the son, or the son about the father, or brothers about one another. Of the two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection- that a thing is your own and that it is your only one-neither can exist in such a state as this. The Politics Book II (Chapter IV) – Aristotle

In the Community, it is not Plato’s ideal, but Aristotle’s prediction which is actualised; parents are fulfilling a social duty without being emotionally connected to their children. This experiment at social harmony makes affection impossible. In fact, as Jonas’s father puts it “Love is such a general term, Jonas. It is obsolete now” or to be more accurate the Community abolished it.

The engineered individual

Even if true filial love is not possible due to the familial system in place, shouldn’t familiarity breed some feelings of affection? This is made by the suppression of emotions. How can one escape the possibility of conflict over the physical attributes of goods allotted to each individual? Exorcise the sensory capacity of the power to perceive difference, lest the comfortable numbness of the “Sameness” is disturbed.

The only way to go about this project would be to engage in a process of forgetting through the symbiotic processes of repression and iconoclasm. The destruction of cultural identities and traditions is made possible by an iconoclastic spirit reminiscent of Fahrenheit 9/11 albeit in service of social justice erasing all time before the Community. But our essence as historical beings compels us to constantly refer to the past, necessitating the medical suppression of those cultural memories of a world lost to time.

A Society Outside of History?

The historian himself, even before writing history, is a product of history. E H Carr (What is History?)

It is the possibility of individuals severed from their ancestor’s history that animates our interest in ideal constructions such as Plato’s “pattern in the sky”, Rousseaus’s “state of nature”, Gandhi’s “Rama Rajya” and Rawls’s “Original Position” since that essentially liberates him from the limits the past has imposed on the exercise of his powers through tradition and custom. If history is to be understood as the process by which the past comes into being, then to erase history would be to liberate man from the chains of national allegiance, religious loyalty and racial solidarity.

The Elders in The Giver.

But even in this highly rationalised world the Community still finds a use for memory in acting as a repository for the policies of the past to the Elders. These memories are stored in the Receiver of memories who take the places of archives as “externalised collective memories”. In the absence of traditions, the community evolves rituals for the inhabitants. Thus, even this society that seeks to escape history and tradition still find instrumental value in the past and in rituals.

Belonging in a Meaningless World

Mark Day (The Philosophy of History) differentiated classical monuments from the modern in arguing that which the modern has presence, the ancient had meaning. This is because modernity is to be considered a product of disillusionment as noted by Charles Taylor (in Western Secularity), wherein the secular becomes primary and the divine secondary to the human condition. While one may scoff at those mourning the loss of myth as being reactionary, it would do well for us to remember that it is myth that provides meaning to our lives. CS Lewis conveys this understanding most beautifully in his essay Myth Became Fact;

The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think” CS Lewis (Myth Became Fact)

For Lewis, myth was the only way for us to overcome Orpheus’s dilemma; since it could convey meaning since its straddles both the concrete and the abstract. In fact, one could attribute Mahatma Gandhi’s unique success in conveying the meaning of Swaraj (or self-rule) through myth, thus proving the power of myth as an orienting force.

In the absence of myth to provide meaning, the Community is united by an ethos of social equality which could qualify as a un-alienated community. But can a human being become truly “at home in the world” where he or she is estranged from those emotional bonds that make them relate to their brethren? The personalisation of the collective inheritance that is history onto the shoulders of the Giver should be understood as an act of disowning the past, which further exacerbates the loss of agency which they seem to be keen on celebrating.

The Inhumanity of Utopia

The colourlessness of the Community.

The Community attempted to create a utopia by cutting off humans from their history by destroying the family and abolishing private property, but in this process deprived the individual of meaning and belonging. They destroyed beauty, love and music in favour of the comfort of total inequality. The inhumane world of The Giver is as cold as the snow that the Community chose not to feel because they forgot what real moral progress is:

…is the progress toward wisdom and virtue over a particular life: the life of a being born to know, love, and die, a personal being who has more than a merely biological destiny shared with the other mammals. Peter Lawler( Higher Education as American Counterculture) in the Imaginative Conservative

What do you think? .