In her Newbery Medal acceptance speech for The Giver, Lois Lowry refused to say exactly what happens at the end of the novel. The end of The Giver can be interpreted many different ways...or at least it could have been until Lowry wrote Gathering Blue and The Messenger. Pretend, for a moment, that we are back before she wrote the two companion novels. What is your interpretation of the end of the novel? What support can you find in the text that make you positive that it is the correct interpretation?
I think that Jonas and Gabe survived because he said he had seen lights and people so it sounds like he did.Also he found joy and happiness to keep him going on. Though there is not much evidence supporting my interpretation that is what I feel happened.
ReplyDeleteReplying to Kate P. just because it says he sees lights doesn't mean Jonas actually sees them. he could be imagining it because he's gone without food and water and he's very cold. My interpretation is well i don't know.
ReplyDeleteAbby M.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding of the last few pages in this book is that Jonas is half awake and half asleep and very confused. He claims that he hears music and then says he might have been mistaking it for an echo. When Jonas first said he saw lights I thought that perhaps it could have just been the snow reflecting, especially because when you look at snow for too long you may start to see colors appear as an illusion. Then I decided that he must have really seen light because he described them as blue, red, and yellow. Jonas seemed very sure that this was for real but perhaps he and Gabe had just slowly passes in the severe temperature and were now dead and in some type of after life or heaven.
My interpetation of the end was that Jonas made it to a place of memory. Like as he was riding down the hill he could hear singing. He also saw cristmis colors on trees everywhere there was memory and love and holiday.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kate P. I think that Jonas and Gabe survived. Jonas saw snow, music and different colored lights. To me that means Christmas. The snow means it was winter, the music could have been carols and the lights could have been from a Christmas tree.
ReplyDeleteI also agree wuth Kate P. I think Jonas and Gabe survived because on the last couple of pages Jona says that he sees color and people and on the last page he said he could hear music, and i don't think you would be able to hear the music of the other town if you weren't alive.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Blake S. I also think that the Giver was sending him a memory of music from back in the community.
ReplyDeleteWhen Jonas and Gabe get to the top of the great steep hill and they see the Christmas village, I think that it might be that Gabe and Jonas had made it,I think this because they still feel the pain of the cold and the wind as they go down the hill on the sled.The book also states that Jonas wills himself to stay awake on the ride down.
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