The Giver — Chapter 6

About This Passage

Lois Lowry places this passage at the hinge of the chapter: Jonas's casual dismissal of the possibility of not fitting in opens directly into a description of the Matching of Spouses that treats disposition, intelligence, and interests as variables in a civic equation. The passage lets us hear the community's own voice of confidence — meticulously, scrupulously, monitored for three years — and it carries three of our vocabulary words at the moment they are doing the most rhetorical work.

Narration Prompt

Reconstruct the chapter in five or six full sentences: open with Lily's hair ribbons and Mother's insistence on neatness, move through the family's ride to the Auditorium and Father's place among the Nurturers at the Naming (including the replacement Caleb and the newchild Bruno), account for Gabriel's reprieve and the family pledge, pass through the Ceremonies of Eight, Nine, and Ten, and close with Asher's Sanitation Laborer story at the midday break before the signal to return to the seats.

Discussion Questions

1. Lois Lowry presents a graded system of clothing — back-buttoned jackets teaching interdependence, the front-buttoned Seven jacket as 'the first sign of independence,' Lily's Eight jacket with pockets marking the child mature enough to keep her own belongings. What is Lois Lowry suggesting about a community that engineers identity this way, and how is this chapter's system of markers different from the way growing up is usually signaled in a family you know or have read about?
2. The community performs the Murmur-of-Replacement Ceremony for the new Caleb because the first Caleb was lost, but withholds that ceremony for the new Roberto because Release is not the same as Loss. What distinction is this community drawing between loss and release, and what does the distinction reveal about who controls the community's memory and who is allowed to grieve?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide