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Copywork
About This Passage
Lowry places recognition before naming. Jonas's body knows what his father has done — the limp arms, the head falling to one side, the stillness — before his mind will allow him the word for it. The four nouns (gestures, posture, expression) and the missing fourth noun (death) trace the architecture of a denial collapsing in real time.
With an odd, shocked feeling, Jonas recognized the gestures and posture and expression. They were familiar. He had seen them before. But he couldn't remember where.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize Chapter 19 in three movements: the Giver inviting Jonas to watch the recorded release, the footage itself from entry to the chute, and the Giver's addition of Rosemary's self-administered injection. Note where the Giver speaks and where he refuses to speak.
Discussion Questions
- Jonas's father uses his 'special voice,' the one he reserves for Gabriel, while filling and then injecting the syringe. What does Lowry accomplish by making tenderness the accompaniment of killing rather than its opposite, and what does this force the reader to conclude about how the community has trained its most gentle people?
- The Giver says 'Shhh,' then 'Be quiet, Jonas,' then nothing at all. Trace the Giver's silences across the scene. What is he doing by refusing to narrate for Jonas what Jonas is about to understand, and what does this method of teaching suggest Lowry believes about moral knowledge?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Identified as something known or familiar from before.
Item 2
Movements of the body, especially of the hands or head, that communicate meaning.
Item 3
The way a person holds their body when sitting, standing, or lying.
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Critical Thinking
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