Yeah it’s been forever since I read The Giver, but my memory of it is “Baby’s first dystopian novel.” Like it was even more oversimplified in its depiction of authoritarianism than a typical YA novel.
Its definitely peddled to pretty young kids, and its written in a way as to be really ambiguous about the kind of ideology/society its criticizing. Theres definitely elements of fascism (racial purity), but the society portrayed is also essentially classless with some sort of big brother element that assigns everyone work and eradicates any form of dissent. Its just not a good book, really, but its also meant to be a somewhat edgy novel for very young people so I guess thats kinda normal.
Honestly I look back on a lot of the assigned reading from my youth and kinda resent being forced to read a lot of tripe. To be fair I was lucky to have a really advanced reading ability (I watched my brother play RPGs before I could read at all, and picked up a lot before I learned in school), so maybe I felt kinda put upon just not reading at whatever level I was at. I really dont mean this as a form of bragging, my experience with education just made me feel like sometimes the system assumes the least of kids when they’re really capable and ready for a lot more.
Yeah it’s been forever since I read The Giver, but my memory of it is “Baby’s first dystopian novel.” Like it was even more oversimplified in its depiction of authoritarianism than a typical YA novel.
Its definitely peddled to pretty young kids, and its written in a way as to be really ambiguous about the kind of ideology/society its criticizing. Theres definitely elements of fascism (racial purity), but the society portrayed is also essentially classless with some sort of big brother element that assigns everyone work and eradicates any form of dissent. Its just not a good book, really, but its also meant to be a somewhat edgy novel for very young people so I guess thats kinda normal.
Honestly I look back on a lot of the assigned reading from my youth and kinda resent being forced to read a lot of tripe. To be fair I was lucky to have a really advanced reading ability (I watched my brother play RPGs before I could read at all, and picked up a lot before I learned in school), so maybe I felt kinda put upon just not reading at whatever level I was at. I really dont mean this as a form of bragging, my experience with education just made me feel like sometimes the system assumes the least of kids when they’re really capable and ready for a lot more.