The Giver — Chapter 13

Narration Prompt

Open the session with a brief summary of Chapter 13 — the fading colors, the failed transmissions to Asher and Lily, the elephant memory, the disclosure of the previous Receiver's failure, and Jonas's offer to share the Giver's pain — then move into the questions below.

Discussion Questions

1. Lowry has the Giver say that the Community's life is 'orderly, so predictable—so painless. It's what they've chosen.' Reading the word chosen in light of Rousseau's distinction between the general will and the will of all, what political theory is Lowry quietly advancing about consent given under conditions of enforced ignorance, and where does the chapter make that theory most visible?
2. The failed transmissions to Asher and Lily rhyme with Stanley Cavell's account, in 'The Claim of Reason,' of the difficulty of acknowledgment — the way another's pain is not a fact we fail to know but a reality we fail to admit. To what extent does Lowry's rendering of Jonas's failures support or complicate Cavell's claim that skepticism about other minds is at bottom a moral evasion?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide