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Copywork
About This Passage
The Giver's moral reasoning collapses into six flat nouns — anguish, poverty, hunger, terror, job, chosen — each one exposing the gap between what the role required and what one human being could bear to do to another. The cadence is halting, almost liturgical, because the Giver is confessing.
I couldn't bring myself to inflict physical pain on her. But I gave her anguish of many kinds. Poverty, and hunger, and terror.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize the conversation between Jonas and the Giver, paying attention to three movements: the Giver's telling of Rosemary's story, Jonas's hypothetical about falling into the river, and the new idea that begins to form in the Giver's mind at the end.
Discussion Questions
- The Giver tells Jonas 'I loved her' and 'I feel it for you, too.' Within a community that has engineered love into obsolescence, what kind of defiance is this moment, and how does Lowry use it to redefine what a teacher-student bond can be?
- Rosemary's response to the memory of a child taken from its parents is to ask for more difficult memories, and finally to ask for release. How does Lowry use Rosemary's arc to test whether moral knowledge and the will to live can coexist in someone without prior preparation?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Exact and carefully accurate in detail.
Item 2
Downcast and discouraged in spirit.
Item 3
Untroubled and composed in a clear, peaceful way.
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Critical Thinking
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