The Giver — Chapter 1

Narration Prompt

In three to four sentences, retell the opening chapter so that the domestic rhythms (the evening telling of feelings, the family unit) and the undercurrents (the overflight incident, the newchild who may be released, the Ceremony of Twelve) both come through with equal weight.

Discussion Questions

1. The Instructor corrects Asher with a lesson in diction — distinguishing distraught from distracted — and Jonas spends the opening chapter searching for the accurate word for his own feeling, settling finally on apprehensive. What does Lowry seem to claim about the relationship between a community's vocabulary and the range of feelings its members can have?
2. Release is used in three distinct registers in this chapter: as schoolyard slang after Asher drops a catch, as grim news for the Pilot-in-Training who strayed over the community, and as a quiet possibility for the newchild Father is nurturing. What moral position, if any, does the chapter invite the reader to take toward a society that applies a single word to these very different events?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide