The Giver

In the modern world, people crave perfection like the most addictive drug: teens slave over diets to be like the skinny models on TV, young and old alike rely on cosmetic surgery to hide their flaws, society's expectations of everyone to never fail has caused more than one suicide, violence in the form of war is glorified to achieve so-called peace, yet we are no closer to achieving perfection than we have before.

But in Lois Lowry's 'The Giver,' mankind has done exactly that.

The future is set in a utopian world that humans have finally been able to create. Every horrible and awful thing that tormented us in the past, like war or hunger or pain, are gone. Indecision has even become nonexistent, because there are also no choices. Everything is assigned, from spouses to children to careers.

12-year-old Jonas is as complacent a citizen as everyone in the Community, until he finally gets assigned the role as the Receiver. He is put under the tutelage of the Giver, who holds all the memories of the world that took place before his. As his training continues, he grows terribly aware of the cruelty and the hypocrisy of his world, that has forgotten the past, taken away beauty and turned humans into living robots who are incapable of feeling anything of true depth. A day comes when he must make a choice, to either pay the price of his ordered society or leave his life behind to save them.

Lowry crafts a haunting tale that may become the reward so many of us seek, raising many questions but answering only a few, leaving the reader to ponder the true meaning of perfection.