The Giver — Chapter 2

About This Passage

This is the chapter's first direct introduction of The Receiver — the community's singular, solitary highest office — and of how committees avoid troubling him. Lowry slides a great deal of architecture into one paragraph: that rules resist change, that exceptions exist, that importance is triaged, and that the citizens' tolerance for procedural delay is itself a form of obedience. Copy it carefully and notice how the paragraph's calm grammar conceals a disquieting claim.

Narration Prompt

In six to eight sentences, retell Chapter 2, attending to the chapter's three movements: (1) Father's story about Assignments and his own certainty; (2) his small rule-breaking to learn Gabriel's name; and (3) Mother's warning about friendship after the Ceremony of Twelve.

Discussion Questions

1. Father's narration of the Assignment process characterizes the Elders' selection as both exhaustive and opaque. What does Lowry's juxtaposition of meticulous observation with total secrecy reveal about the community's relationship to its own transparency?
2. Track the movement of Father's anecdote about breaking the rule to read the Naming list: from casual confession, through the emotional justification of enhancing his nurturing, to the affectionate nickname Gabe. What does the arc of that small story reveal about how this community's citizens metabolize their own small transgressions?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide