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The Giver, a la Shmoop

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You know that awkward moment when you completely forget somebody's name?

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Well... I don't. I have to remember everything around here. My name is Jonas, but you can

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call me...the Receiver.

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Being the Receiver of Memories is a lot of pressure.

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You see, here in my hometown, we like things to stay the same.

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We've even got a word for it...sameness. There's no messy feelings, no war, not even road rage.

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ROFL is more like SIMA...

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Smile in moderate amusement...

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Our leaders, aka the Elders, want to make sure that mankind's sordid past remains a

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secret, and that's where I come in.

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I'm sort of the backup drive for the community, safeguarding all those forgotten memories

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so we don't make the same mistake twice.

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Sometimes that's good... some memories should definitely stay buried...

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...but it gets a little lonely when you're the only one who remembers the good things,

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like sled rides and sunshine. There's no such thing as child labor laws

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here...once you turn 12, you're assigned a career in the working world.

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The Elders pick your job for you, so you don't have to worry about that whole "free choice" thing.

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I had it pretty easy with my new gig. I buddied up with the old Receiver while he zapped all

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his knowledge and wisdom into my head.

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Except now that he was forking over his job, he was called "The Giver."

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I never had a chance to ask him whether it was better to... Giver than to Receiver....

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Being the Receiver was a kick.  I could interrogate anyone I liked without getting yelled at...

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...and The Giver showed me all this stuff I never knew about. Still, I had a lot of

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questions. Such as... what was it like in the Elsewhere, where we send all of our weak links?

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On the flip side, I couldn't share my knowledge with anyone, except poor little Gabriel, the

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runty baby my dad took care of as part of his job.

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My memories stopped Gabriel from crying, and he needed all the help he could get, or he'd

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be released with the other social rejects. But then The Giver started to show me the

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dark side of things.  The reason we had to keep these memories secret was because some

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of them were horrible.

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I mean... pain? Watching your friends die on a battlefield? Marathon viewings of titanic?

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That's just barbaric.

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All these drugged-up, emotionless yokels around me have it easy.

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Oh, and guess what? "Released" is really a fancy term for "getting a lethal injection

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and being shoved down a garbage chute."

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People like my dad did that on a daily basis, even to babies like Gabriel!

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The Giver decided that enough was enough, and he decided to help me fake my own death

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and bust out of this place.

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Once I made it to Elsewhere, all of my memories would be released, and the mindless robots

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back home would be forced to wake up and smell the coffee.

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I had to speed things up, though, because Dad announced that little Gabriel was scheduled

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to bite the dust.

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So I snuck out one night, and we biked for our lives!

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I did most of the pedaling, though.

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But pretty soon we ran out of food, and I sprained my

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ankle, and it started to snow

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We got to the top of a hill, and I saw a cool

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sled, just like in The Giver's memory.

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I figured we could take a ride...it's not like I have anything else to do. I hope we

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make it to Elsewhere.

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Until then, I'm just going to put up my arms and say, "Weeeeee!"

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