I am ashamed to say I had never heard of this multi-multi-million selling book, nor the Taylor-Swift-cameoing 2014 film based upon it. I came to it from the (increasingly godsend-y) Goodreads - where it tops the list for Soft Science Fiction.
I should explain for those unfamiliar with that term (and are now wondering if this blog is a fetish-y thing involving not completely nude photos of Dr Crusher from Star Trek), that Soft Sci-Fi is the term for science fiction that focuses on the societal or psychological, by means of some sci-fi conceit. Good examples include the peerless Ursula Le Guin, imagining a world without gender in The Left Hand of Darkness, asking "what would the world be like if men weren't constantly being prats", through to the recent (and excellent) Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh, which imagines a Tinder-to-its-natural-conclusion future where everyone has an official score out of 10, can matchmake with unbelievable precision, and pay for live subvocal flirt-coaching, with, naturally, the course of true love still not running very smoothly at all.
This is a good fit for me as a genre as it's both geeky and pretentious, plus I can sometimes pretend that quite sweeping, soppy romances (like both those above) are 'raising interesting ideas about the human psyche'. The genre really comes alive when it allows you, by way of the transmuted setting and technology, to take a fresh look at part of life that you've never scrutinised before, and so to rewire your brain a little (hopefully for the better).
It was with this optimism that I approached The Giver. Here the conceit is an incredibly safe, uniform, planned society has developed in the near future. The protagonist, Jonas, is coming up to his 12th birthday, where he will be assigned his life's vocation, chosen for him by the Community Elders based on his personality and skills. This could be, like his father, a neonatal doctor who tends for the Community's babies, until they are released to their (always adoptive) parents after their first year of life, or as a manual labourer or a bicycle repairman (the only mode of travel, for there is no leaving the Community). The society is, quite literally, blind to divisions of race, religion or disability (there are no differences), and woman are treated exactly as men, with the exception of the special 'Birthmother' profession, where women are inseminated to pop out 4 children in 3 years and then take up a role as a labourer for the rest of their adult lives. Everyone is content, polite, contributing and, very, very docile.
The book is superb at gradually unveiling this fascist utopia, a kind of Albert Speer designed Hebden Bridge, and holds no judgements as the reader suffers a creeping, cold dislocation between Jonas and his family's jovial equanimity and the disturbingly structured nature of their lives.
The book turns on Jonas' graduation, where he is given an incredibly special and prestigious job, that of the community memory keeper, taking over from the eponymous 'Giver'. Here the premise becomes more parable-esque (god I wish that was a real word), and we find that The Giver holds the communities ancestral memories, including all of humanity's experience of culture, love, victory and bravery; but also all of the pain, war, hunger and helplessness. Jonas takes on the burden of the clan's humanity, and with it comes an angry contempt towards the placidity of his old friends and family, who couldn't be angry or contemptuous if they tried, leading to a desperate break for freedom.
Sadly, this is where I started to lose my interest in Jonas and his emotional awakening; once the story clearly lays out its pieces as a battle between Freedom and Fascism, the pace snowballs (quite literally at one point) and the novel becomes much more simplistic in its arguments. Having spent so much of the novel humanising the members of the community, Jonas breaks out, Flatland-style into the only 3D character in a world of cardboard cut-outs.
I rather think that my hopes for a brain-changer were unfair on The Giver. The novel is aimed at teenagers, and Lowry's work generally is pitched at younger children - and this is clear in the ending, which evokes that very incessant, page-turning sense of escape that you see in classics like The Silver Sword. This means that some of the allegory can become heavy handed, in a Lord of the Flies sense, compared to the more engaging and coherent logic of a book with similar themes, aimed at a similar age group, like Flowers for Algernon. Lowry does a great job of making clear how 'normal' life feels for the members of the Community, and it's wonderful to see how important the book has been, particularly in the US, at allowing children to explore the perils of 'my safety is more important than my freedom' approach.
If you can forgive a moment of self-regard, I think there is a more interesting book trapped within The Giver - where Jonas doesn't break free. As the new memory-keeper, Jonas has power and prestige in the community - he can't be questioned, punished or harmed, and he is the only man who empathises, who angers, who lusts, who loves. What would the community do with him? If you were part of the machine, if you quite literally couldn't conceive of a different set of values, of responses, of emotions to those you have been taught to feel, and with you walked someone who saw the world in bright technicolor - what would you do? Maybe their is some rewiring to be had after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment