The Giver - Az emlékek őre

Egy tökéletes jövőben, ahol nincs háború, fájdalom, szenvedés, az ifjú Jonas is megkapja életre szóló feladatát a vének tanácsától. A mentorával töltött idő alatt azonban ráébred, hogy mekkora árat kell fizetnie mindenkinek ezért a színtelen békéért. Az emlékek ifjú őre letér a kijelölt ösvényről és a szabályokat felrúgva azt teszi, amiről azt gondolja, hogy helyes.

This film, based on Lois Lowry's book, tells the story of a perfect world. Everyone here is happy. When Jonas is 12 years old, he's chosen to be the community's Receiver of Memories. He enters into training with an old man called The Giver. From the Giver, Jonas learns about pain, sadness, war, and all the unhappy truths of the "real" world. He quickly realizes that his community is fake. Confronted with this reality, Jonas faces difficult choices about his own life and his future.

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Parents need to know that Lois Lowry earned the Newbery Medal for The Giver, the first of a four-part series that examines a flawed utopian society. The novel has a disturbing scene in which Jonas witnesses his father euthanizing a baby by injecting it with a needle in the head. There are also mild sexual references. But the overall story is riveting -- and the book is one of the most thought-provoking novels for children ever written.


Jonas begins The Giver feeling uneasy about the upcoming Ceremony of Twelve, where he will receive the Assignment that determines his vocation for the rest of his working life. That night, at the nightly sharing of feelings, after his sister, father, and mother discuss their emotions, his parents comfort him about his worries. They remind him that his life will change after the Ceremony, but they reassure him that the Committee of Elders has been watching him closely and will give him an appropriate Assignment.
Jonas's father brings home a newchild who needs extra care, and they call him Gabriel, although Father is not yet supposed to know the child's name. Lily decides that she will begin volunteering hours at the Nurturing Center after she…
Read the full The Giver Summary

As we learn more about Jonas' family, we also learn about the community as a whole. Family units must apply for children, spouses do not get to choose one another but, instead, are matched, and grandparents do not exist. All of a sudden, this utopia that Lowry has created doesn't seem quite right. The mood is foreboding, a feeling that something bad will happen. This mood suggests that Jonas' community is far from perfect.
A long time ago, the people in Jonas' community chose to have the community ruled by a Committee of Elders. The Committee of Elders controls everyone and everything, blasting rules and reprimands from loudspeakers located throughout the community, including in every family dwelling. A total of fifty infants are born to Birthmothers every year. Each peer group is identified by its age — for example, Threes, Sevens, Nines — and must follow specific rules about appropriate clothing, haircuts, and activities for that particular peer group. When children become Eights, they begin mandatory volunteering and are closely observed by the Committee of Elders so that the committee can assign a lifelong profession to each child at the Ceremony of Twelve, which takes place every year during the December Ceremony.
The Giver begins with Jonas' apprehension about his Ceremony of Twelve, when he will be assigned his lifelong job. He can guess which jobs his friends, Fiona and Asher, will be assigned, but he has no idea what his own job Assignment will be. At the Ceremony, Jonas learns that he has been selected to become the next Receiver of Memory, the highest position in the community.
Jonas begins training under the present Receiver of Memory, an older man whom Jonas calls The Giver. The Giver lives alone in private rooms that are lined with shelves full of books. Jonas' training involves receiving, from The Giver, all of the emotions and memories of experiences that the people in the community chose to give up to attain Sameness and the illusion of social order. The first memory that Jonas receives from The Giver is a sled ride down a snow-covered hill. Jonas has never before experienced going downhill, cold weather, or snow. Eventually, through memories, The Giver teaches Jonas about color, love, war, and pain. Jonas begins to understand the hypocrisy that exists in his community — that is, the illusion that everything in the community is good when in fact it isn't. The people appear to love each other, but they don't really know what love feels like because their lives are a charade; their reactions have been trained. Jonas realizes that people have given up their freedoms to feel and think as individuals, choosing instead to be controlled by others.
One day, Jonas asks The Giver if he can watch a video of a release his father performed on an infant earlier that morning. He watches and is horrified when he realizes that a release is really forced death by lethal injection. Jonas discusses his feelings with The Giver, and they decide on a plan that will force the people to give up Sameness. However, before they can carry out their plan, Jonas learns that Gabriel, a two-year-old infant who has been staying with Jonas' family unit because Gabriel has trouble sleeping through the night, is going to be released — killed. To prevent Gabriel from being killed, Jonas takes Gabriel, whom he loves, and together they ride a bicycle out of the community to Elsewhere. By escaping the community, all of the memories that Jonas has received from The Giver will be transmitted back to the citizens in the community, forcing them to experience feelings and emotions and to remember their past.
Jonas travels for days and days with Gabriel, who is dying from starvation and the cold weather. Finally, they come to the top of a hill where there is snow and a sled. They get on the sled and ride downhill toward music and Christmas lights. What actually happens to Jonas and Gabriel? Do they die? Are they dreaming? Do they go to a house with lights and music? Do they end up back in their original community? Do the people in the community change? All of these questions are left unanswered at the end of the book. Lowry intentionally writes an ambiguous ending so that readers can decide for themselves what happens to Jonas and Gabriel at the end of The Giver.