Written Defense of The Giver

"The Giver" was written by Lowis Lowry in 1993 and is a young adult dystopian novel about a boy named Jonas. In the story, he lives in a world where the government has found a way to revert everyone to "sameness," eliminating emotion, color, and more in favor of a bland, stagnant life. The purpose of this was to eliminate the bad, but it also then eliminates the good. When Jonas is given his job at age 12, he goes on a journey to discover all of the things that are being kept from the people. Because of this, Jonas experiences sexuality and lust. There are also topics like suicide, starvation, infanticide, and euthanasia covered in this book, which is why it is often banned in schools. 

Claim: I claim that "The Giver" should not be banned because the sensitive topics are not graphic and not allowing children to read them is essentially the same thing as the government converting a population to "sameness" by not letting them experience real-world problems and emotions. 

These are two articles that support the teaching of "The Giver" in classrooms and agree that it should not be banned. 

- School Library Journal: https://www.teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2013/09/banned-books-week-2013-defending-the-giver-by-lois-lowry-guest-post-by-elsa-ouvrard-prettol/

- Challenged Book Spotlight: file:///Users/avadunwoody/Downloads/114-529-1-SM.pdf

Rationale: 

The first thing to consider when defending a banned book is to make one important distinction: just because I believe a book should not be banned does not mean I think everyone of all ages should read it any time they feel like it. With “The Giver,” I think grades 7 and above are acceptable, but younger than that would not be recommended. According to the School Library Journal, one librarian agrees. “I would not put the book in anyone’s hands before they are ready to read it – this is the golden rule for any book, really,” the librarian said. “Give a book at someone before they are mature enough to understand it, and it will, at best, be lost on them, and at worst, turn them off from reading the book (and possibly others!) later on.” 

Once students are at a reasonable age to understand the contents of this novel, they should be allowed to read “The Giver” because of the many lessons it teaches. Even the book itself is about the dangers of censorship, so there is a certain type of irony in trying to ban the book too. In Lowis Lowry’s FAQ section of her website, she says, “I think banning books is a very, very dangerous thing. It takes away an important freedom. Any time there is an attempt to ban a book, you should fight it as hard as you can. It's okay for a parent to say, ‘I don't want my child to read this book.’ But it is not okay for anyone to try to make that decision for other people.” She says that the world portrayed in her book demonstrates what might happen when these freedoms are taken away and it is “a frightening world.” 

By reading this novel, students can learn important lessons about life. For example, this novel teaches about the importance of freedom of choice and not letting other people dictate your entire life. The librarian says, “The people in Jonas’ community are more like sheep than humans. They follow blindly and willingly their leaders, trusting in their good judgment, only thinking of the bad things they are not experiencing, and having forgotten the good things they have given up.” Because of this, they are unable to expeirene life for real and are shielded by what has been taken from them. 

While it is reasonable for parents to want to protect their children from all the horrors and dangers of a world that can be utterly and truly cruel, it just isn’t realistic, and in the long run, they are doing more harm than good by sheltering their child and leaving them ill equipped for when they encounter pain. One of the things the librarian said is, “Parents worry about all the different ways their children can be hurt in this world, and for good reason, because there are a thousand ways to get hurt, and of course parents, out of love, want their children to be safe. But this is not just utopian (for pain is inevitable), but also deeply ironic, as the novel describes a process that every family goes through.” It is almost as if by wanting to shield their children from this novel in particular, they are trying to cultivate the exact opposite of a dystopian society, but since that is truly impossible, they end up creating a world exactly like the one in the novel. Why do you think Jonas had such a hard time receiving the memories from The Giver? It was because he was sheltered his whole life from pain, so when he had to encounter it, it nearly destroyed him. Whereas had he been exposed to smaller amounts of pain, say, the sad death of a pet, he would have developed stronger means of coping that would have allowed him to handle the pain better. 

By turning children away from this novel that bears many life lessons and shows the importance of growth from pain, people who want to ban this book are basically teaching that the way to deal with bad things is to run away from them or try and shield themselves from them, which is dangerous. Lowis Lowry says that we should be teaching kids to do the opposite, and the way to do that is by not banning books like “The Giver” and putting them into classrooms so that children can learn from them. Lowis Lowry says, “I feel very strongly that we should question our own beliefs and rethink our values every single day, with open minds and open hearts. We should ask ourselves again and again how we are connected to each other. And we should teach our children to do so, and not to turn away.”