The Giver

Chapters 1 - 3

READING CHECK

1. What is the name of Jonas’s closest friend?

Answer: Asher

2. What is Father’s occupation?

Answer: Nurturer

3. What is the name of Jonas’s sister?

Answer: Lily

4. What mode of transportation do the people in Jonas’s community use?

Answer: bicycles

5. Children in Jonas’s community are grouped by year. What year is Jonas as the novel begins?

Answer: Eleven

QUIZ

1. Each evening, Jonas’s family has a ritual in which they share their:

A) hopes

B) feelings

C) mistakes

D) apologies

2. What upcoming event is making Jonas feel apprehensive?

A) getting a bicycle

B) starting school

C) bringing Gabriel home

D) the Ceremony of Twelve

3. Which of the following is an occasion in which release is not a punishment?

A) release of a newchild

B) release of a Seven

C) release of the middle-aged

D) release of a Birthmother

4. What physical characteristic do Jonas and Gabriel have in common?

5. Why does Jonas take an apple home when he knows it’s against the rules?

QUIZ ANSWERS

1. B. Feelings are shared at the end of each day, and it’s against the rules to hide one’s feelings or lie about them.

2. D. At the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas will receive his Assignment. He’s worried about what Assignment he will receive, since he doesn’t have any obvious talents or interests.

3. A. The release of the Elderly is another instance in which release is not a punishment.

4. They both have pale eyes.

5. When he’s tossing the apple back and forth with Asher, Jonas notices that the apple changes in some way, so he takes it home to study it.

Chapters 4 - 6

READING CHECK

1. Where does Jonas do his volunteer hours one day alongside Asher and Fiona?

Answer: The House of the Old

2. True or false: Jonas often dreams while he sleeps.

Answer: false

3. What is the treatment for the Stirrings Jonas starts to feel?

Answer: taking a pill each morning

4. Who chooses the Assignment that each Twelve receives?

Answer: the Committee of Elders

QUIZ

1. What must each family member report at the morning ritual?

A) dreams

B) how well they slept

C) plans for the day

D) feelings

2. Who attends the Ceremony each year?

A) children

B) parents

C) the Elders

D) the entire community

3. What new responsibility does Lily receive at the Ceremony of Eight?

A) keeping her room clean

B) riding a bicycle

C) doing volunteer hours

D) washing the dishes

4. Will Gabriel be assigned to a family unit at this year’s ceremony? Why or Why not?

5. What does Asher explain that one can do if one does not fit in with the community and wants to leave?

Discussion Suggestion: The topic of release comes up often in Jonas’s community. Sometimes, release is talked about as a happy occasion and cause for celebration, but other times, it’s viewed as negative, such as when given as a punishment. Make a prediction about where the released people go. What evidence from the text supports your prediction?

QUIZ ANSWERS

1. A. Each family member shares his or her dreams, and the family talks about what the dream likely means.

2. D. Everyone in the community attends the Ceremony, indicating that it is a significant event.

3. C. Lily will get to choose various places to volunteer in the community as a way to discover her interests and aptitudes, prepare for her future Assignment, and take on more responsibility.

4. No, because he hasn’t gained enough weight yet, nor does he sleep soundly enough at night. Instead, he will continue to spend the night with Jonas’s family.

5. One can apply for Elsewhere and be released.

Chapters 7 - 9

READING CHECK

1. What Assignment does Asher receive?

Answer: Assistant Director of Recreation

2. After giving each new Twelve his or her Assignment, the Chief Elder says, “Thank you for your _______________.”

Answer: childhood

Discussion Suggestion: In contemporary Western cultures, people often choose their career path when they finish high school, or sometimes later. In Jonas’s community, the Elders choose a person’s career path and assign it at age twelve. Compare and contrast these two practices. What are some advantages and disadvantages of each one?

3. Why does Jonas feel confused and ashamed while the Chief Elder is giving his group mates their Assignments?

Answer: She skipped him.

4. What job has Jonas been selected for?

Answer: Receiver of Memory

QUIZ

1. What special innate quality must the Receiver of Memory have?

A) The Capacity to Feel

B) Discipline

C) Obedience

D) The Capacity to See Beyond

2. What strange thing happens when Jonas looks out at the audience while onstage?

A) They all look away.

B) They give him a standing ovation.

C) They change.

D)   They disappear.

3. Which of the following is one of the instructions Jonas receives before his first day of training as Receiver?

A) You may steal.

B) You may talk about your training with your family.

C) You may disobey your parents.

D) You may lie.

4. Why were the Elders so careful in selecting a new Receiver of Memory?

QUIZ ANSWERS

1. D. The Chief Elder doesn’t quite understand what this means, but Jonas realizes that this must be related to when he sees things change, like the apple.

2. C. Jonas is thinking about saying that he cannot See Beyond when the faces of the audience change for a moment. He then realizes that this might be what it means to See Beyond.

3. D. This instruction is particularly troubling to Jonas, since he’s been taught from a young age to never tell a lie. He wonders who else in the community may have been given this instruction.

4. The previous selection ten years ago failed. No one knows exactly what happened, but the girl who was selected to be Receiver disappeared.

Chapters 10 - 12

READING CHECK

1. What is the first memory The Giver transmits to Jonas?

Answer: Snow and riding downhill on a sled

2. How does the Giver transmit memories to Jonas?

Answer: He places his hand on Jonas’s back

3. What is the first memory The Giver transmits that involves pain?

Answer: Staying in the sun for several hours and getting a sunburn

4. True or false: After The Giver transmits a memory, he can no longer experience it in his mind.

Answer: True

QUIZ

1. What is the most surprising difference Jonas notices between The Giver’s dwelling and Jonas’s dwelling?

A) framed artwork

B) books

C) the desk

D) windows

2. How does Jonas learn the names of the new things he experiences in the memories, such as “sunshine”?

A) He senses them in the memory.

B) The Giver always tells him directly.

C) He reads about them.

D) He guesses them.

3. What does Jonas dream about after his first day of training?

A) basking in the sun

B) sailing on the ocean

C) sledding downhill toward a destination

D) giving a bath to The Old

4. What does the Giver explain that Jonas is seeing when things like the apple and Fiona’s hair seem to change?

5. How does Jonas feel about the choice to relinquish color and go to Sameness?

QUIZ ANSWERS

1. B. Jonas’s dwelling only contains a few books, but The Giver’s dwelling has shelves full of them.

2. A. As The Giver transmits a memory, Jonas perceives the word for what he experiences.

3. C. Jonas dreams of being on the sled. This time, has a strong sense that he is heading towards a destination, though he doesn’t know where.

4. Jonas is seeing the color red.

5. He thinks they should not have relinquished color.

Chapters 13 - 15

READING CHECK

1. What phrase does The Giver use to describe the past?

Answer: “back and back and back” (153)

2. What word is used to describe the places beyond communities like Jonas’s?

Answer: Elsewhere

3. What must happen when a Birthmother gives birth to identical twins?

Answer: one must be nurtured, and one must be released

4. What does Jonas do when Gabriel becomes restless during the night?

Answer: accidentally transmits the memory of sailing to Gabriel

5. What terrible memory does The Giver impart to Jonas when Jonas offers to help ease The Giver’s pain?

Answer: a memory of war

QUIZ

1. Now that Jonas is starting to see colors, what does he want to be able to do?

A) choose

B) run

C) read

D) eat

Discussion Suggestion: Jonas and The Giver talk about the danger of letting people make their own decisions. How can having the ability to make decisions be positive, and how can it be negative?

2. Ten years ago, after a new Receiver was chosen and subsequently failed, what happened to the memories she was given?

A) They returned to The Giver.

B) The members of the community had access to them.

C) The Committee took them away.

D) None of the above

3. The Giver gives Jonas another sledding memory, but this one is different than the first. How is it different?

A) Jonas makes it to the destination at the bottom of the hill.

B) Jonas learns to steer the sled.

C) Jonas loses control of the sled and breaks his leg.

D) The Giver rides on the sled with Jonas

4. The Giver provides two examples of how he has used the memories to give advice to the Committee of Elders when they come to him for wisdom. Explain one example.

QUIZ ANSWERS

1. A. Jonas feels frustrated that he and the other people in the community are not able to make decisions. However, when the Giver explains that the power to make decisions comes with the possibility of making the wrong choices, Jonas understands somewhat why choices were taken away.

2. B. The Giver explains that when the previous Receiver left the community, the memories she had been given were released to the community, and chaos ensued.

3. C. This time, the snow is icy and the sled cannot be controlled.

4. Example one: The Giver thinks of the memory of hunger and starvation when the Committee of Elders seeks his advice about their idea of assigning Birthmothers four births instead of three. He advises against increasing the population.

Example two: When the plane flew over the community, the Giver thought of memories in which people had destroyed others out of fear, and consequently brought about their own destruction. He advises they refrain from shooting down the plane.

Chapters 16 - 18

READING CHECK

1. Why does Gabriel sleep so well in Jonas’s room?

Answer: When he wakes up, Jonas transmits a happy memory to him.

2. What game does Jonas find his friends playing that causes him anguish?

Answer: war

3. Who does Jonas now see as beautiful?

Answer: Fiona

4. What was the name of the girl who was selected to be Receiver of Memory before Jonas?

Answer: Rosemary

QUIZ

1. What is The Giver’s favorite memory?

A) sailing on a lake

B) a family holiday celebration

C) a visit to a museum

D) a birthday party

2. Based on The Giver’s favorite memory, Jonas experiences a new feeling. What is the new feeling that was strong in the memory?

A) love

B) excitement

C) hunger

D) friendship

3. In The Giver’s favorite memory, Jonas recognizes a difference between the way the Old are treated in the memory, and how they are treated in his community. Describe the difference he perceives.

4. Jonas realizes that he is experiencing a new depth of feelings that nobody else in the community feels. Why are his feelings deeper than other people’s?

A) He stopped taking his pills.

B) He can see colors now.

C) Has has memories of Elsewhere.

D) all of the above

QUIZ ANSWERS

1. B. The Giver’s favorite memory is of a family celebrating together in their home, likely at Christmas.

2. A. This is a new feeling for Jonas, and once he feels the love in the memory, he wishes that feeling was present in the community.

3. In the memory, the Old are grandparents that are present in the same house with their family. However, in Jonas’s community, the Old are cared for in a separate place—The House of the Old—and are not close to their children or children’s children.

4. D. All of these things—the Stirrings, the colors, and the memories he receives—allow Jonas to feel things that the rest of his community cannot truly understand.

Chapters 19-21

READING CHECK

1. When Jonas watches Father perform the Ceremony of Release for the twin, what does Father do?

Answer: Father injects a liquid into the baby’s scalp, killing it

2. The Giver explains that rather than seeing-beyond, like Jonas, he had a different ability as a boy. What was his ability?

Answer: hearing-beyond

3. Who was The Giver’s daughter?

Answer: Rosemary, the previous child selected to replace him as Receiver.

4. What does Jonas do to hide from the heat-seeking devices the search planes use?

Answer: transmits memories of snow to Gabriel, while keeping some for himself, to make them both cold

QUIZ

1. How does Jonas react after watching the Ceremony of Release?

A) He is angry.

B) He laughs.

C) He runs away.

D) He fights The Giver.

Discussion suggestion: What explanation does The Giver provide for the community members’ ability to carry out the Ceremony of Release without remorse? With his explanation in mind, do you hold Jonas’s Father responsible for what he did to the newborn twin? Why or why not? 

2. Why won’t The Giver go with Jonas to Elsewhere?

A) He doesn’t want to spend time with Jonas.

B) He doesn’t approve of the plan.

C) He thinks it’s too dangerous.

D) He needs to stay and help the community when the memories return.

3. What change do Jonas and the Giver plan to bring about by sending Jonas to Elsewhere?

4. Why was Jonas forced to run away sooner than planned?

QUIZ ANSWERS

1. A. Jonas is shocked and angry; he cries and shouts after watching the release. 

2. D. The Giver is committed to helping the community bear the memories and the difficult feelings they will bring.

3. They want to make the memories shared among the entire community, rather than being the burden that one person (The Receiver) must bear alone.

4. It was decided that Gabriel would be released. Jonas had to leave immediately to save Gabriel.

Chapters 22-23

READING CHECK

1. What injury does Jonas sustain after falling off his bike?

Answer: a sprained ankle

2. True or false: Jonas rides at night for the entire journey to Elsewhere.

Answer: false; once he no longer hears search planes, he begins riding during the day.

3. What does Jonas catch for he and Gabriel to eat once they run out of carrots and potatoes?

Answer: fish

4. How do Jonas and Gabriel get down the hill at the end of the novel?

Answer: on a sled

QUIZ

1. As the landscape changes and Jonas gets farther away from the community, what does Gabriel mistake for a plane?

A) a drone

B) a satellite

C) a blimp

D) a bird

2. What happens to the memories as Jonas gets farther from the community?

A) They start to fade.

B) They grow stronger.

C) They become frightening.

D) They make Jonas want to return.

3. What difficulties do Jonas and Gabriel face on their journey?

A) hunger

B) cold

C) fatigue

D) all of the above

4. Why is the snowy hilltop at the end of the novel familiar to Jonas?

Discussion Suggestion: Lowry keeps the ending of the novel somewhat ambiguous. What do you think happens at the end? Where are Jonas and Gabriel? What evidence from the novel influences your opinion?

QUIZ ANSWERS

1. D. Gabriel calls out to Jonas when he sees planes. However, they are so far from the community that they see birds, and the planes have stopped searching for them.

2. A. The farther away they go, the harder it becomes for Jonas to hold on to the memories. This means that The Giver was correct, and that the memories are growing stronger for the people in the community.

3. D. Jonas and Gabe experience all of these difficulties, and it takes every ounce of strength Jonas has to keep going.

4. It was the same snowy hilltop that The Giver transmitted in the first memory he gave to Jonas. Even the sled is present, as it was in the memory.