The Giver: Thanks for the memories (not the communism)

In this episode, join us for a discussion of the merits of communism. JK 😂, we're actually talking about the book The Giver, and how it critiques a totalitarian government through the lens of a communism-like society. Is left and right all there is to the political spectrum? Or is there something more sinister hiding there...Join us to find out! Also included is some commentary about political correctness, freedom of expression, and government-regulated families...lots of spicy topics today! 

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Transcript

 Dearest. Gentle listener. No, it's too flowery to you. Our listeners, here's a question. If you could give up one of your memories to somebody else, and it would be like it's their memory instead of yours and you wouldn't have it  📍 anymore, would you do it? 

 Hi, and welcome to the Literary Lamppost Podcast, where we analyze books and see what we can learn from them.

I'm Caitlyn, I'm a math grad student, but I love English and I love analyzing literature. And I'm Ashley, an assistant editor for a magazine and a writer.

Today we're gonna be discussing the book. The Giver written by Lois Lowry in 1993, Lowry's, actually a really good author. She wrote one of my childhood favorites, number The Stars, which is a World War II historical fiction for children. That's what it was 

called. I remember thinking about it this week. I remember that the title has something to do with stars.

Yeah, it's so good. Anyways, so not the book that we're talking about. Yeah, we're talking about the giver. Interesting fact. It was inspired by the author's father when he got Alzheimer's. Lowry realized that he had forgotten the painful memory of her sister's death and wondered if it was good that he had forgotten the memory.

Then realized that we as humans are a product of our experiences, the good and the bad, and thus the book was born. It's a dystopian fiction that. Has been banned several times actually due to some dark themes like euthanasia, degrading of motherhood, violence, et cetera. Though it is classified as young adult, and many schools actually study it in their English classes.

Maybe some of you guys had to read it for school. I 

personally didn't. I know that our school did it in some of their English classes, but I don't remember. I remember a friend telling me I should watch the movie because they were watching it in class. I read the book soon after that, but I didn't watch the movie till many years after when I was actually student teaching as an English teacher, and the class that I was looking after was doing it.

I've never actually seen the movie. You should. It's pretty good. Yeah, I want to, but today we're focusing on the book and the themes that we're gonna be going over are government extremism and some of the history around that, the way that language is used in society, suppression of intellectualism, personal agency, and diversity and memory.

Going back to the question that Caitlyn posed at the very beginning. So a lot of really good English teacher themes there for you. Yeah, pretty much. So let's get into a little bit of a summary. It does contain some spoilers, but we don't say what happens in the end, just in case you haven't read it and still want to.

So the giver was set 

in a. Futuristic dystopian society that had eliminated pain and fear and war and choice to ensure stability and what they called sameness. 

And people lived highly regulated lives. Their emotions are suppressed by medication. Families are assigned and there's no climate or terrain of any kind.

So the weather's always the same, and the land is all completely flat. People can't see color, they don't have memories of a time before. The time that they live in. And they all live in this city where they cannot leave. And if they do, they are released. We 

don't find out what released means until towards the end of the book.

The main character is a 12-year-old boy named Jonas, who lives with his assigned family unit, his mother, his father, and his little sister. And the box starts with the upcoming ceremony of 12, which is a coming of age ceremony where all 12 year olds are given their lifelong occupations. For example, laborer, doctor, fish, hatchery attendant, birth mother, nurturer.

Jonas is chosen a very chosen for a very rare and honored role. There is only one in the society. The receiver of memory. So he meets 

the current receiver of memory, a man known as the giver. And the role of receiver of memory is to carry all of the memories of the world before sameness. And these memories include color, love, pain, music, war, and these deep emotions that nobody experiences anymore.

And the first memory Jonas receives is the joy of sledding down a hill in winter, something so foreign for him. He doesn't know what a sled is, what snow is, what a hill even is. Through this process of 

transferring memories, Jonas learns about life and death and about freedom and individuality and real feelings, and he begins to see color in his everyday world that nobody else can see, and begins to feel love and grief, and he even learns that the process of release.

So if somebody does not conform to their society, like the elderly, the rule breakers or underdeveloped infants is really euthanasia. Jonas is 

horrified at this 

and decides that he needs to change things. So we'll leave the summary there so we don't spoil the ending for you. Definitely go and read the book.

It's a very interesting read. So something that Ashley and I talked a lot about when we were planning this episode is that most critiques of totalitarian governments within literature and pop culture and media critique communism as the only extreme that has totalitarian tendencies. 

Think of Animal Farm 1984, Fahrenheit 4 51, brave New World.

There's quite a few. 

We often hear about this conversation of right versus left, and you can imagine this as a sliding scale from the left to the right, if you will. But what I find really interesting is that I think that there's actually another scale that slides along with that. It's not the same scale, but on either end of the extreme right and the extreme left there is actually totalitarianism, and in the middle we have.

The more freedom oriented government systems. And so I think that what happened is that in the wake of communism after World War ii, a lot of authors drew inspiration from that and created a whole body of literature in response to that. The giver is written by an American author, so it reflects a lot of American attitudes and.

Is actually part of a long term reaction to communism that is embedded in United States culture filtering on from the US to Western culture. But I think that it's really important that we remember that communism is not the only form which extremist government takes. And on the opposite side of communism, we find fascism.

Fascism is a far right form of government where most of the country's power is held by one ruler or a small group of people under one party. Communism, on the other hand, is a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

What's interesting to note, however, is whenever communism has been attempted by society, it leads to a dictator similar as in a fascist society. 

So it's almost like. This closed loop, when you go far enough left or you go far enough, right, you end up with totalitarianism, which is a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservient to the state.

What's interesting is it seems like everybody. Kind of knows about communism and knows that it's a bad thing, and there's this relatively well-defined body of literature around communism, which the Giver is part of, 

and we kind of want to give a history of why communism. Became such a central part, I guess, of United States and then filtered onto Western culture and why it has shown up so much in this genre of dystopian fiction.

So the United States was a staunch enemy of fascism during World War ii. They joined the war when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. But even before that, there was concern about the Nazis and the other fascist Axis Powers and the US actually allied with the Soviet Union, which was communist at that time, out of necessity and throughout the war within the us.

A lot of anti-fascist propaganda was promoted promoting freedom, democracy, and anti totalitarianism as their wartime values, I guess you could say. So fascism was framed as the ultimate evil. But post-war, the US' enemy switched very quickly from the defeated fascist powers to the Soviet Union as it began exerting its influence over Eastern Europe.

I'm sure you've heard about the Iron curtain. Everything behind that was under Communist power. In 1947, president Truman committed the US to being anti-communist, both ideologically and militarily, hence the beginning of the Cold War. And so being anti-communist kind of became the defining feature of US identity.

That's really interesting how quickly it switched. Hey. Oh, it switched so quickly. And then there was this whole thing called the Red Scare, which continued on through the forties and fifties. People were very afraid of communists, very afraid of spies infiltrating their neighborhoods. And people who were previously anti-fascist or defined as leftists during the war were suddenly the enemy.

They were seen as disloyal. A lot of people were investigated, fired, blacklisted, their careers destroyed, even though. Most of them were innocent and there was a lot of fear. So the anti-fascist 

sentiment faded into the background and the anti-communist sentiment became the center. And as a result, we have an entire generation of people who don't know what fascism is.

I remember seeing a video about how Aidan Ross, who's a really popular Gen Z YouTuber, was looking up the word fascism. He couldn't even pronounce it. 

Goodness, my generation is sad. But anyways, while the anti-Communist sentiment remains, it's kind of led to people being afraid of the term socialist. And especially in the states, being afraid of things like subsidized healthcare or education.

Every 

value that's even vaguely associated with communism is automatically labeled as bad. Other countries that didn't have this red scare to the same extent like Australia or the Nordic countries, think that this is absolutely crazy. That anti-communist attitude is super embedded in United States culture.

Fascism was over and defeated in the war, and so it was no longer seen as a threat, 

but just because the power is defeated. Does not mean that fascist tendencies do not remain. So could it not then follow that people so afraid of one extreme could back easily into the other extreme without even realizing it.

There's this overlap of 

extremes at both ends of the political spectrum. So I think that sometimes in a reaction to communism, people try to move as far away from. Communist totalitarianism as they can, and in so doing, they end up backing into the right wing version of totalitarianism, which is fascism.

And that's why it's really important to understand the history and the forces which drive politics and political movements, because otherwise we can end up in situations that maybe we were trying to escape all along. Especially in a world like ours where there's a fair amount of geopolitical instability.

I think the education. About politics is really important and the giver and books like it can play a really important role in teaching people about these systems of governments and some of the consequences that can result from them being in power. And so in the giver, communism is represented in a few ways.

So first of all, there's this concept of sameness. Everybody is treated pretty much identically. They all wear the same kind of clothing. They all have the same kind of house, the same kind of family unit, and it's framed as equality. However, if they try to leave this system, they are killed. There is a lack of freedom and choice.

People are not able to make decisions about. Their lives, what they wanna do with their lives, who they want to have as a spouse, and pretty much every other decision about their life. 

Now, just to preface my next statement, we are not communists. We do not. Condone communism. We condemn extremism in every form, but there were a couple values of this book 

that we agreed with.

For example, there is no homelessness and there are no forced gender roles. There are male characters who are in charge of taking care of young children and female characters who work in the 

justice system, but even if the values are good, they become meaningless and even sometimes harmful. When personal agency is taken away, both the far left.

And the far right take away personal agency. 

Agency, meaning the ability to make choices about your life and direct your life in the way that you want it to go. 

So there's this sliding scale where there's agency and freedom in the middle, but totalitarianism on either side. Conversely, 

just because it's bad when it's forced doesn't mean it's a bad value, and it's something that we shouldn't strive for as a society, 

for example, equality is good.

Personal agency is good, 

but personal agency is meaningless without equality because if you don't have an equal power, you don't have the same ability to make choices about your life. If you're considered less than for whatever reason, your skin color, your gender, et cetera, your ability to make decisions about your life is significantly limited.

But equality without personal agency is equally meaningless. Everyone is equally limited in their ability to make decisions about their life. Like in the Giver, they are all equal, but their ability to have a rich and meaningful life is significantly limited. One dynamic that's present in the book 

a lot is this idea of politeness and apologizing.

People are trained to apologize for any bad behavior with specific wording. They say, I apologize for whatever it is, and the other person responds by saying, I accept your apology. And that's just how everyone does it. And it keeps the peace and the harmony, but it feels hollow and. It's like the people who say these things do it out of habit rather than because they actually mean it.

And this actually kind of, to me felt like a critique of political correctness. And I have to say I agree with them to some extent. 

Yeah. 'cause people complain about political correctness for that very reason that it, it doesn't mean anything. But the point of political correctness really boils down to you caring about the people you live with and who are in your society.

Or 

at least that's what it's supposed to be about when it becomes. Just about using the right words. That's when that's when it can become well, that's when it loses its meaning. That's when it loses its meaning. Yeah, 

but you know, why would we use words which so deeply hurt others? It displays a lack of empathy for our fellow human beings, and honestly, a loss of humanity.

Even if like we can't understand somebody else's perspective and we don't face the similar issues. Why would we still not extend empathy and kindness towards them? But that motivation 

loses its meaning if it's just about the routine and using the right words to appease the right people. And you don't know the reasons why you are using words or not using certain words, 

hence the issues of enforcing it.

You get people who don't understand why they should be politically correct and thus push back against those rules, yet they are the reason those rules are in place. I. But it doesn't fix anything because they haven't actually understood. I think that when you focus on fixing 

language, rather than fixing your heart, you are trying to address the symptom rather than the cause.

Mm-hmm. And you get a bunch of people who are grudgingly following the rules outwardly, and then they get excited about once again being allowed to be mean. That hate, which was not ever going to be snuffed out by. Policing. The words that you use is still there and it simmers under the surface, hence the internet, pockets of 

extremism.

All that to say, be kind. Use your words thoughtfully. Don't do it for the sake of being politically correct. Do it because it's what you would want others to do for you. Another interesting aspect of society in the Giver is. The specific way that they highly control education. Uh, reading is restricted.

The giver is the only one with access to books about the past. There's no memories of the past. Students don't learn anything about history. There is this disdain for art and creativity and self expression, and there's also a high level of surveillance about what people say in the conversations they have.

There's a speaker everywhere. That listens in on people's conversations and that kind of thing can happen all across the political spectrum. But when it does, you know you're in trouble. And the way that this looks nowadays, it can look like book banning when books explore uncomfortable or inconvenient topics.

And it can look like restricting the type of art that can be created or the kind of music that can be listened to, or the kind of topics that can be taught in classes in school. And this really ties into this idea of personal agency being really, really highly restricted, and that plays out in a lot of different areas.

Throughout the book. 

People are assigned everything in their lives, their jobs from age 12, they're assigned their occupation, their partners, their children, everything. They get no choice, even though to a degree it does. Look at their abilities and their 

tendencies, but it's still a decision that's made for them rather than given to them to make.

And you know, it's great that both men and women are able to do the same jobs without reference to their gender. And other differences are kind of erased. But the problem is, at the end of the day, they didn't have any choice at all. So equality is not really equality if you 

don't have any agency. And within the family units, every family is exactly the same.

You apply for a spouse, you apply for children. Every family has one mother, one father, one boy, and one girl. And you know, when family units are forced to be a certain way, they lose their meaning. There's no love because it's being factory assembled. 

And that really makes you think about this idea that when you force family into a particular shape, one size fits all, it loses some of its meaning.

Jonas's father isn't able to tell him that he loves him and spouses don't love each other, and they separate. Once children have grown and they get old. 

And everyone's forced to take medication to suppress their romantic and sexual side 

because if they could make their own decisions about what they wanted their family to look like, it would really threaten this social order that has been established.

And I guess that's the whole idea of this book. Everyone is the same sameness. That's not great because you lose individuality. You lose this ability to learn about other opinions and other world views and perspectives. You lose the richness of culture and traditions and languages. Our world is diverse, but yet sameness shows up in our lives today, 

and we can see that by looking back at how certain events and art throughout history.

Have been whitewashed and how in government, which is supposed to represent all people, so we should see our population proportionally represented, bringing all those perspectives from all kinds of experiences and giving a voice to those who haven't historically had one. But we don't, we tend to have sameness.

In government especially, 

and when we see it, when we see sameness represented in media or leadership, we should be able to recognize it and consider whose stories might not be being told, like who isn't getting a chance to 

tell their story. Like the question that we opened with at the beginning of this episode, a central idea here in this book.

Is this idea of memory. There's only one person in the community who holds all of the memories of history. And I think it's really interesting that even in a society where they have done their absolute best to get rid of memory because it's uncomfortable, because they don't want to deal with it, they still recognize that it's important.

There's this famous saying, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And I've recently. Seen an addition to this quote, which I think is very thought provoking. It says, those who suppress the teaching of history intend to repeat it. And so the erasure of history is something to watch out for.

When does it happen and when might it be happening In our world at the moment, it's something, it's something to keep an eye on because we can't 

cover up the bad deeds of the past. It's important to air out, you know, the dirty laundry of your country's history. Painful. Sure. But without being able to do that, we become blind and we don't pass those lessons down to future generations.

And society can easily repeat the same mistakes. I. We need to 

study history so that the atrocities are not repeated, even if that makes our country look bad. That's really important, and that's the whole point of the character of the giver to hold these painful memories so that the population doesn't have to, 

but it's too much for one person and Jonah's.

Bags that everyone would be allowed to share the memories, so it would be easier to bear. 

However, along with all those painful memories, he's also given memories of birthday parties and Christmas and colors and love, and he eventually comes to the conclusion that even though life is safer without the memories, it's better with them.

You know, life is kind of hard. The New York Post and the movie came out said, is it worth giving up the experience of beauty and joy and love in order to end pain and suffering? 

There are many times I have wished there was such a thing as an emotional painkiller that I could take when I'm feeling really down, and then I remember that it's called alcoholism.

Um, but would it actually be a good thing to be able to erase 

traumatic memories? Think about some of the traumatic things that say children experience. Would they not be better off not remembering some of that trauma? 

It's an interesting question. It's something that, um, in preparing for this episode, we actually talked a fair bit about, and we weren't able to.

Come to a clear answer, so I don't actually know if there is a single good answer about this. We'd love to hear what you think 

in the giver. A lack of memory about the past automatically implies loss of love and emotion and color, along with some other things. What might a parallel example in our world look like?

I think there's a fair bit of room for some interesting discussion here. So those of you who have read this book, maybe if you studied it in English class, help us out here. Yeah, let 

us know. The other thing that this society was trying to prevent by getting rid of memories was war. And preventing pain.

And you know, I tend to think that a world with choice is potentially worth pain if we make a bad choice. But equally, our choices is what causes bad things. So the world is complicated and we'll leave it there. 

You know, any system of government can so easily become corrupt no matter how good the values.

It is founded on 

c. S Lewis has a really interesting take on this. In his book, Mia Christianity, he says, that is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended. Civilizations are built up, excellent institutions devised, but each time something goes wrong, some fatal flaw always brings a selfish and cruel people to the top, and it all slides back into misery and ruin.

It's a part of the human condition, but that doesn't mean that we should just give up on those values. Um, I think that we need to live them and we need to promote personal agency and equality of all human beings and 

kindness. And on that note, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Literary Lamppost.

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