The Giver: From science fiction to nonfiction

Spoiler Alert: If you have never read The Giver by Lois Lowry and intend to do so, you don't want to read this article.

Some science fiction is not so sci-fi-ey anymore. Take "The Giver" by Lois Lowry as an example. When I first started teaching that novel to seventh-graders 20 years ago, it was the most fascinating, entertaining, engaging -- and far-fetched book to which I could have exposed my students. It was great for classroom discussions. But reality? Not so much. Until recent years.

The back of the book tells readers, "Jonas's world is perfect." It was always interesting to introduce the novel by asking students to describe what a perfect world -- a Utopia -- would be. The responses were typical: no crime; no sickness; loving families; you know, "love, peace and chicken grease," as the saying goes. Immediately, readers see all of that -- families that eat together, communicate about their day during the evening ritual of sharing of feelings, help one another sort through confusion. But instead of taking to this, after saying they wanted it, students were put off by it. "Too many rules." "They're like robots." "Nothing seems natural." "It's too perfect" -- whatever that means. I am currently facilitating an adult online book club with "The Giver," and the adults have the same reaction my students had.

As I reflect on this book that I have read and taught countless times, I am not surprised at the reaction. What surprises me is that this world that once seemed implausible reeks of not just plausibility, but actuality.

Jonas's community has no past. Citizens have no memories beyond what are called "one-generational memories." The setting is the distant future -- where animals, snow, hills, books and color, among other "obsolete" things, no longer exist. Pain and natural death are foreign concepts. Nothing is unexpected. "Everything is under control." Respect and proper speech are revered, expected and practiced. Differences are rare and not to be discussed. Those who do not conform are "released" from the community.

Perhaps you don't see any connections between Jonas's world and ours, but they're there. In fact, they're rampant. We'll look at a couple areas.

Take the decision the Elders of the community made eons ago to get rid of pain. To do so, they had to get rid of history because history is, of course, painful. It is truth, and truth is often ugly. It doesn't always feel good -- and we just have to feel good, right? So to satisfy the senses, avoid reminders of the past and to discard the painful truth, books had to go. Everything that points to the past had to go.

Are we not seeing this now with the removal of monuments, the desecration of statues and the banning of books -- leaving ourselves without the wisdom these truths provide?

I was appalled upon reading recently that Christ Church in Virginia, where George Washington was a founding member when it opened in 1773, has decided to remove a memorial plaque in his honor.

"The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome," church leaders wrote in a letter to the congregation. So with a wave of a hand or, in this case, a unanimous decision...abracadabra, hocus-pocus, plaque be gone. Why? It made folks uncomfortable.

Something else noteworthy is Jonas' communities' commitment to what they call "precise language." They take it so seriously that when Jonas once said he was "starving," he was reprimanded for his failure to speak as he should have. "You have never been starving. You will never be starving," he was told.

One character was even physically disciplined when he repeatedly confused "smack" with "snack" as a little boy. "I want my smack!" he would say. Committed as they were to proper speech, the instructors would smack him with the discipline wand, causing red marks, until, eventually, he learned to say what he meant.

I suppose Bob McNair, owner of the NFL's Houston Texans, can relate to getting beat up over language even when people knew exactly what he meant. When referring to the national anthem debacle, he mentioned "inmates running the prison." Have we not all heard that expression -- that and/or "inmates running the asylum"? We all know what it means, but now, McNair is accused of racism. It's ridiculous. Was he calling NFL players literal inmates? Of course not, but people are looking to find fault now, looking to be offended -- and people looking for offense will find it 100 percent of the time -- even if they have to make it up.

This is the reality in which we find ourselves. I could go on and on about how true-to-life "The Giver" now is -- from the community's spurning of those with special needs to its rejection of danger to its one-race population -- but I'll let these suffice for now. The world we knew has morphed/is morphing into the world Lowry wrote about almost 25 years ago. I'm not sure how she saw it coming, but she did, and it's a sad sight.

Adrienne Ross is owner of Adrienne Ross Communications and a former Southeast Missourian editorial board member. Contact her at aross@semissourian.com.