The Theme Of Memories In The Giver By Lois Lowry

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared,”- Lois Lowry. In this quote, Lowry addresses the isolation of keeping memories to oneself. In her fictional novel The Giver, Lois Lowry introduces a similar conflict. In this novel, the protagonist, Jonas, lives in what they believe is the perfect world. This supposed utopia is called the Community. The main conflict is that the Elders, the Community’s leaders, are depriving people of meaningful lives. Lois Lowry develops the conflict while revealing the theme that memories are meant to be shared. The author reveals them as she highlights the characters’ lack of knowledge, implicates their emotional deprivation, and describes the wisdom gained from memories. First, Lowry accentuates the characters’ absence of common knowledge. As the Giver introduces Jonas to memories, he begins imagining life if everyone felt what he could. When expressing this to the Giver, Jonas says, “But why can’t everyone have the memories? I think it would seem a little easier if the memories were shared. You and I wouldn’t have to bear so much,” (Lowry 112). Jonas expresses that the Elders withhold memories from the past, and therefore, this deprivation eliminates the knowledge within them. The Elders, without these memories themselves, hold back their information, unaware that it would create meaning in people’s lives. Later, the Giver shows Jonas a baby’s release, performed by Jonas’s