The Giver (The Giver, #1)

by Lois Lowry

It was the sort of thing one didn’t ask a friend about because it might have fallen into that uncomfortable category of “being different.” Asher took a pill each morning; Jonas did not. Always better, less rude, to talk about things that were the same.

with sameness there is no space for change or growth, we grow through discomfort and finding new and different spaces

How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.

The exemption from rudeness startled him. Reading it again, however, he realized that it didn’t compel him to be rude; it simply allowed him the option.

Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness—and promised answers—he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: “Do you lie?” But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received were true.

“But sir,” Jonas suggested, “since you have so much power—” The man corrected him. “Honor,” he said firmly. “I have great honor. So will you. But you will find that that is not the same as power.

They have never known pain, he thought. The realization made him feel desperately lonely,

is it worse to experience pain or to be alone in that pain?

“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’s 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. You could ask, ‘Do you enjoy me?’ The answer is ‘Yes,’” his mother said. “Or,” his father suggested, “‘Do you take pride in my accomplishments?’ And the answer is wholeheartedly ‘Yes.’”

But now Jonas had experienced real sadness. He had felt grief. He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those. These were deeper and they did not need to be told. They were felt.

Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.

Would they live happily ever after? Certainly we want them to. But the frustrating truth is that they can’t. No one can. Humans are restless and complicated beings. They fail, often. They fall into despair. Then they pick themselves up and rethink. Everything has to start fresh, sorting itself out, overcoming obstacles, reigniting a new kind of community, a new way of accommodation.

We react with a kind of mindless cruelty. We don’t tease or torment her, but we do something worse: We ignore her. We pretend that she doesn’t exist. In a small house of fourteen young women, we make one invisible.

How comfortable I made myself feel for a moment, by reducing my own realm of caring to my own familiar neighborhood. How safe I deluded myself into feeling.