Guide to The Giver

The Giver Characters: Jonas, Fiona, Asher, Gabriel and Rosemary

A community where every person has an assigned place, and one boy who learns what is missing

By Tori BooksUpdated November 20266 min readContains spoilers

Lois Lowry

In Jonas's community nobody chooses their own job, partner or children. The Elders watch everyone for years and then, at twelve, tell each child what they will be for the rest of their life. It works so smoothly that it takes a long time to notice how much is missing.

These are the people around Jonas, and what the system made of each of them.

Jonas

Jonas is thoughtful, careful with words and a little anxious. He has light, pale eyes, unusual in a community where most eyes are dark. He has begun to see something change in objects, a quality he cannot name until he learns that it is color. At the Ceremony of Twelve he is skipped over, then named the next Receiver. It is a rare honour that also isolates him: he may not discuss his training, may lie, and must bear memories nobody else can share.

The Giver

The Giver is the current Receiver, an old man who lives alone in rooms full of books and holds every memory of the world before Sameness: snow, sunshine, war, love, music. Passing the memories to Jonas exhausts and frees him at the same time. He is the first person who tells Jonas the truth, and together they make the plan that ends the book. He also carries a private grief, which is tied to Rosemary.

Fiona and Asher

Fiona is kind, patient and calm, and she volunteers with the old before being assigned to care for them. Jonas sees that her hair is red, and the change in his feelings for her, called the Stirrings, is the first thing that marks him as different. Asher is Jonas's funny, clumsy best friend, who mixes up his words and is always being corrected. He becomes Assistant Director of Recreation. Both friendships become harder once Jonas learns what the community hides.

Gabriel

Gabriel, called Gabe, is a newchild who is not growing as he should, so Jonas's father brings him home at night to give him extra care. He has the same pale eyes as Jonas, and Jonas can calm him by passing on peaceful memories. When Jonas learns that Gabe is to be released, he takes the baby with him when he flees, which is why Gabe matters so much in the final chapters and in the later books.

Father, Mother and Lily

Families in the community are units of two parents, matched by the Elders, and two children, assigned rather than born to them. Father is a gentle Nurturer who cares for newborns, Mother works in the Department of Justice, and Lily is a chatty seven-year-old who loves her comfort object, a stuffed elephant. They are loving in their way, but when Jonas asks whether they love him, they tell him the word is too imprecise. A discovery about his father's work is the turning point of the novel.

Rosemary

Rosemary was chosen as Receiver ten years before Jonas. She was eager and bright, and the Giver loved teaching her. But when he began to pass on painful memories, she could not bear them, and after five weeks she asked to be released. When she left, the memories she held came back to the whole community, causing chaos. That is why the Elders hesitated to choose another Receiver, and why the Giver later reveals that she was his daughter.

Every character and their assignment

More about The Giver

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This guide discusses the whole plot, including the ending.