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Copywork
About This Passage
Selected because the passage stages in miniature the whole argument of Chapter 16. Lowry gives Jonas a shared sensory moment with a creature — damp grass, cold water, the nudge of a horse's head — and then names the result as a bond perceived, which is precisely the recognition his community has engineered out of human life.
In one ecstatic memory he had ridden a gleaming brown horse across a field that smelled of damp grass, and had dismounted beside a small stream from which both he and the horse drank cold, clear water...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Chapter 16 in eight to ten sentences. Begin with Jonas's opening wish for his scraped knees and ball games, then the Giver's ordering of the good memories (birthday, museum, horse, campfire), then the favorite memory of the holiday family scene, then the conversation about grandparents, then Jonas's question to his parents and the correction about "love," then the whispered line to Gabriel, and finally the refused pill.
Discussion Questions
- At the start of the chapter, Jonas "did not want to go back. He didn't want the memories, didn't want the honor, didn't want the wisdom, didn't want the pain." Why does Lowry open with this catalogue of refusals just before giving Jonas the favorite memory? How do you know this sequencing is deliberate?
- The Giver cannot remember his own favorite memory clearly after transmitting it to Jonas; he is "left with a vague wisp of that one." What does this mechanic of memory — that giving is also losing — reveal about the Giver's vocation and about what Jonas is slowly becoming? What in the text makes you think Lowry wants us to feel this loss?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Overwhelmed with intense joy or delight; feeling rapturous happiness.
Item 2
Got down from the back of a horse, vehicle, or raised surface.
Item 3
In a manner that shows fondness, tenderness, or loving regard.
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Critical Thinking
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