Resumo de The Giver - Lois Lowry

The Giver is a soft science fiction novel written by Lois Lowry and published on April 16, 1993. It is set in a future society which is at first presented as a utopia. The novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth year of his life. Jonas's society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to "Sameness", a move which has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the position of "Receiver of Memory," the person who stores all the memories of the time before Sameness, in case they are ever needed. As Jonas receives the memories from his predecessor?the Giver?he discovers how his community's life has become.
Despite controversy and criticism that the book's subject material is inappropriate for young children, The Giver won the 1994 Newbery Medal and has sold more than 3.5 million copies. In the United States, it is a part of many middle school reading lists, but it is also on many banned book lists (see Controversy). The novel forms a loose trilogy with Gathering Blue (2000) and Messenger (2004), two other books set in the same future era.

Theme:
Color represents diversity and a depth of feeling beyond that which the majority of society enjoys. In The Giver, however, objects do not "gain" color through intense emotional experiences on the part of their observers; rather, Jonas learns to see the colors which objects intrinsically possess. Apparently, the transition to Sameness involved removing color vision from the people, although the Giver implies that genetic engineers also attempted (without total success) to remove the variability in the human population (even light eyes and red hair are rarities).
A motif of nudity recurs in several places. During his volunteer hours (a time when children aged eight to twelve explore their community and prepare for an eventual career), Jonas assists in the House of the Old, where the most aged members of the Community reside. Lowry describes how Jonas bathes an old woman, Larissa; he enjoys the trusting, carefree nature of the experience, which reminds him of his father caring for an infant. Jonas muses about how his Community has strict rules against nakedness in almost all circumstances. He personally finds them a nuisance?such as the admonition to keep oneself entirely covered while changing for athletic games?and does not understand why the Community would institute such precautions. Later, the tenderness of the bathing scene gains a sexual edge, when Jonas dreams about cajoling a female friend, the red-haired Fiona, to remove her clothes and climb into a tub so that he can bathe her. Jonas recounts this dream at his family's breakfast dream-telling, and his parents recognize it as an early sign of what they call "the stirrings" (puberty). A daily pill makes the stirrings go away.

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