Chapter 16 · The Giver

Copywork

He was in a room filled with people, and it was warm, with firelight glowing on a hearth. He could see through a window that outside it was night, and snowing. There were colored lights: red and green and yellow, twinkling from a tree which was, oddly, inside the room. On a table, lighted candles stood in a polished golden holder and cast a soft, flickering glow.

He had rehearsed them in his mind all the way home from the Annex. "Do you love me?" There was an awkward silence for a moment.

If Jonas could show Mother and Father one thing from the warm room, what would he pick?

For the educator Two passages, one from the Annex and one from home. The first is the opening four sentences of a paragraph: Jonas has just stepped into The Giver's favorite memory. Each sentence adds one thing he sees. The first joins two parts with “and,” then adds a phrase after a comma, “with firelight glowing on a hearth.” The second saves “and snowing” for the end, after a comma, so it arrives like a second look out the window. The third uses a colon to bring in a list, “red and green and yellow,” with “and” in place of commas, and it sets one word off between two commas: “oddly.” That word tells us whose eyes we are using; a tree indoors is strange only to Jonas. The fourth opens with a place, “On a table,” and joins two describing words with a comma, “soft, flickering.” The second passage runs across three paragraphs, after the evening meal. The first sentence ends a paragraph and holds the vocabulary word “rehearsed”: it is long, the way the ride home was long. The second is a paragraph of its own, four words of dialogue with the question mark inside the quotation marks and no “he said” at all. The third opens the next paragraph and holds the vocabulary word “awkward.” Have the student set each sentence on its own line, as the book does: a long sentence, a short question, then the silence. The talk prompt asks what Jonas would show Mother and Father from the warm room. One student may pick the candles, since Jonas says he liked “the light they made.” Another may pick the old woman rocking the little one on her lap, or the people who “hugged one another.” Any choice can stand if the student says what it would show them. Keep the talk on Jonas and the room; whether his answer at home protects his family or himself belongs to the last written question. Do not name the holiday or say whose family this is: the chapter never does, and Jonas calls it only “a holiday.”

Discussion

Narration Tell back the chapter in order. Start where Jonas sits at home and does not want to go back. Stop the next morning, when he does not take his pill.

Jonas asks only to hear about The Giver's favorite memory. Why does The Giver give it away right then? Character
Jonas says, “I was thinking, I mean feeling, actually.” Why does he change the word? Character
Jonas calls life in the warm room “a dangerous way to live.” But he isn't sure what he meant. What do you think the danger is? Inference
Jonas practices his question all the way home from the Annex. What answer does he expect? Character
Jonas has learned from the memories that being alone can hurt. He has also learned that it can be a joy. When he whispers to the sleeping Gabe, which kind of alone is it? Theme
The chapter opens with Jonas going back to the Annex because “the choice was not his.” Whose choice is it when he throws away his pill? Author's choice

Make a Connection Think of a word that means a great deal to you. To someone else it might sound small. How would you show them what it means?

Vocabulary

ecstatic: 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. Overflowing with joy and delight.
solitude: Although he had through the memories learned about the pain of loss and loneliness, now he gained, too, an understanding of solitude and its joy. Being alone in a peaceful way, which is different from feeling lonely.
pervaded: But this time he fit right in and felt the happiness that pervaded the memory. Spread through every part of something.
rehearsed: He had rehearsed them in his mind all the way home from the Annex. Practiced words ahead of time before saying them for real.
awkward: There was an awkward silence for a moment. Uncomfortable and embarrassing, so that no one knows what to say.
faltered: He faltered, not able to find the word he wanted. Stopped short or wavered, unsure how to go on.
blurted: Jonas blurted out what he was feeling. Said something suddenly, without stopping to think first.

Critical thinking

When Jonas says the community's way “seems to work pretty well,” The Giver answers, “It works.” Does The Giver agree with him?
Father asks for “Precision of language.” Mother says Jonas could ask “Do you enjoy me?” instead. Is that his question, asked more exactly?
When Jonas says “Yes, thank you, I do,” it is his first lie to Mother and Father. Is he protecting them, or protecting himself?