‘How do we keep this from happening?’: ‘The Giver’ author Lois Lowry joins The Velshi Banned Book Club

Would we be happier in a society without the brutality of war, without rain, ruining our commute with babies who slept through the night? What would you be willing to sacrifice for a world like that? What would you give up? Your freedom to choose, or your individuality? How about creativity or love? Those are the questions. At the center of today's Velshi Band Book Club feature the Newberry Award-winning American classic The Giver by Lois Lowery. Set in a colorless, emotional, emotionless world that values sameness above all else and mercilessly euthanizes those who do not fit it, The Giver tells the story of 12 year old Jonas. He is, by all community metrics, normal. He apologizes readily for anything he's done wrong. He chooses his words very carefully. He dutifully takes a pill every single day to suppress any new feelings or urges that come with hitting puberty. That is, until his life assignment ceremony. Every 12 year old is assigned their life's work, maybe to the fish hatchery or as a doctor, or as a laborer. But Jonas is selected to be the community's next Receiver of Memory, which means Jonas will receive every single memory of the Collective Society from the former Receiver, who is now called The Giver. While in honor, Jonas is isolated. It will be he alone who experiences pain, suffering, love, and joy. Initially published in 1993, The Giver grapples with heavy themes including the weight of memory, the freedom of choice, society and governmental control, and individualism. While dystopian literature has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially in the young adult and children's genres, The Giver was the 1st. It served as a proof of concept that those weighty themes are not too complex for middle grade readers to understand. Lowry doesn't just use what is within the text to convey these themes, she employs her writing style to tell the story too. Lowry's writing reflects the sterile and controlled community with direct language, unencumbered dialogue, and pointed descriptions. Indeed, precise language is one of the primary means of psychological control within The Giver. Precise language. This is a society that has done away with feelings that cannot be so easily defined, including love. Quote, Father? Mother Jones asked tentatively after the evening meal. I have a question. I want to ask you what it is. What is it, Jonas? His father asked. He made himself say the words, though he felt flushed with embarrassment. 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, then Father gave a little chuckle. Jonas, you of all people, precision of language, please. What do you mean? Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated. Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it has become almost obsolete, His mother explained carefully. Jonas stared at them. Meaningless. He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory. And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language, says his mother. Akin to new speak in George Orwell's 1984, Lowry's community has hyper specific vocabulary. The words are similar enough to language we use in real life to maintain the pace of the story. Newborn babies are new births. Sexual urges are stirrings. The result is an unsettlingly successful valley effect. We know this place, these words, these ideas, but we know that they're not the same. As Jonas begins to understand the power of emotion and memory, the writing becomes more vivid and more expressive. Humanity peeks through the cracks of The Giver from the very first page, but the reader does not truly begin to understand the lack of it until these moments. The very topics that make The Giver such a critical read are the same reasons it has topped the American Library Association's most banned book list year after year. While infanticide, suicide, and euthanasia are central to the plot of the book, the way The Giver handles these topics is what makes it a classic. The Giver isn't violent or bloody or gratuitous. It is quiet. It is introspective. It is delicate. The Giver allows its readers to come to the conclusion that we must have reverence for human life, that our differences are our greatest strengths, and that the darkest parts of humanity are needed to make way for the most beautiful. The Giver is one of those rare works of literature that unites American schoolchildren. It is not hyperbolic to say that The Giver has become one of the most assigned contemporary works ever. It has become a rite of passage for middle grade readers, A doorway through which they must pass to begin to consider their own humanity and their own place in this world. Right after the break, I'm joined by the legendary author Lois Lowry. They'll go anywhere. Today's meeting of the Velshi Band Book Club is now in session. I am thrilled to be joined by a true literary legend, Lois Lowry. She's award-winning author of many important children and young adult books, including today's Velshi Band Book Club feature The Giver. Lois, thank you and welcome to the Velshi Band Book Club. Thank you. I I love, I love the description of me as a living legend. You absolutely are. And you know after having been introduced since, you know 1993, we've got to get creative in in how we do it. So we hope we did some justice to it because this one's a test. This one is like interviewing Margaret Atwood on The Handmaid's Tale. So many people have read this book over the years that they know what we're talking about here and yet it's newly relevant. I I mentioned in the introduction that it's centrally the book The Giver is centrally about the power and of choice and of individual freedom. That is in my opinion, more relevant now than it was when you wrote the book. I was just gonna say the same thing. Every year it seems more and more relevant. You mentioned kids in schools here having all of them read it, usually in 8th grade, but I'll add to that. Excuse me, I have a cold. It's in 32 other languages. And I've talked to kids around the world, even in Iran, Turkey, Kathmandu, Romania, Thailand, and they all react to this book. And they all want to know, how can we keep this from happening? And of course, I tell them you're the generation that's going to make that determination. Yeah, Let's talk about how do we keep this from happening. I want to read from the book about one part of society. In the Givers, they are referred to as the birth mothers quote. I think new children are so cute. Lily side, I hope I get assigned to be a birth mother. Lily mother spoke very sharply. Don't say that. There's very little honor in that assignment, but I was talking to Natasha, you know, the 10 who lives around the corner? She does some of her volunteer hours at the birthing center, and she told me that birth mother mothers get wonderful food and they have a very gentle exercise periods, and most of the time they just play games and amuse themselves while they're waiting. I think I'd like that, Lily said petulantly. Three years, Mother told her firmly. 3 births and that's all. After that, they are laborers for the rest of their adult lives until the day they enter the House of the Old. Is that what you want, Lily? 3 lazy years and then hard physical labor until you are old. Lois, I want to ask you about this because we've had Margaret at Atwood on about The Handmaid's Tale literally just days before the fall of Roe V Wade. This concept of controlling women and their reproduction and forced birth is central to your dystopian myth. And yet I tried to seduce the reader. That's the role of the writer, of course. Seduction into believing that this would be a wonderful, safe, comfortable world. I It has, as you pointed out, no crime, no poverty, no discrimination, no divorce, no sexism, no war. And then only gradually, by the use of little passages like the one you just read, does the reader realize that terrible compromises have been made. I hadn't thought about it until you chose that particular passage. But of course the role of women is is incremental, is is integral to the book. Incidentally, there are three more books that follow the Giver, and in the final one, the main character is the young woman who'd been a birth mother. So you get to find out what happens to some of them. Look, we, we, we all books are banned for the same boring reasons all the time. But one of them is that this is too much for kids. This is too much for them to understand. How? Tell me how you process that? Because you really are dealing with concepts that are severe and serious and and increasingly potentially real. How do you address the idea that that 8th graders are prepared to deal with the the heaviness and severity of the concepts? Well, of course, I'm one end of the row and the kids are there, and in between are teachers and librarians and parents, and those are often the ones with whom the kids interact and discuss this book. And that's where the important stuff takes place. I think in those discussions I tried to write it as an adventure story and it is that I I was surprised when almost immediately after its publication in 1993, the reaction was so enormous and and on both sides of the spectrum. For example, in one week this happened in 1995. I can identify the date because of other things that were going on. But in one week, I got a letter handwritten from a woman who was so outraged that you could almost see it in her handwriting, as if her hand had been shaking and the first line of her letter was, Jesus would be ashamed of you. Same week, I got a letter from a monk in a Trappist monastery who explained that Trappists are a silent order, but they are read aloud to at meal time, and the giver had been read aloud to his mom. And he said, no, there's a better wow. Coming up, he said that they voted to place it in the category of sacred text. Wow. Wow. You're right. That's a bigger. That's a bigger wow. You know, one of the things interesting you heard from a Trappist month, one of the one of the things in the society, in The Giver, is that the society is governed by the idea that sameness is the most important thing. Children are taught not to point out flaws or differences. Tell me a little bit about this. It's one of the reasons in this comfortable, safe community, there's no discrimination. You only realize after a little while, everybody's the same, they're all the same color. There's no racism. How could there be? But in making that choice, and we don't know how that how that came about in in previous decades. But in making that choice, the community, the population, the government had let go, had had rescinded all the richness that diversity gives to our lives. Everything that they have done has been a choice that has been a sacrifice and a terrible compromise. And of course it's the young boy who comes to realize that when people object to the book and try to ban the book, they're kind of caught because there's no explicit sex or violence. And so they, they take out of context small things that they think they might find objectionable. But I think what they're really objecting to, and they don't know this, but it's pervasive within their reading, is that a young person has perceived the hypocrisy and corruption of the governance of the generation that has created their world. And of course that's very relevant today. That's increasingly relevant today. And it's one of when I said they're all books are banned for the same few stupid reasons. That's one of them. Right. People who who books that allow us to see the truth of what might be happening, especially in terms of control is one of the key reasons. Lois, it's a real honor to have you here on the Velshi Bend Book Club. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. The award-winning author of The Giver, Lois Lowry. My pleasure. I'm sorry you have to have this segment, but I'm pleased that you've taken it so seriously. It's such a dangerous time. One day we will drop the band from the name. It will just be the book club and we will be able to enjoy. Thank you my friend.