Thnks fr th mmrs- Gabe.
They can’t help it. They know nothing.
Jonas wasn’t interested, just then, in wisdom. It was the colors that fascinated him. “Why can’t everyone see them? Why did colors disappear?” The Giver shrugged. “Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences.” He thought for a moment. “We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.
No one else seemed to feel this kind of passionate attachment to other humans. Not to a newchild, not to a spouse, or a coworker, or friend. She had not felt it toward her own parents or brother. But now, toward this wobbly, drooling toddler –.
When would he ever learn to stop saying “Look” to a man who had no eyes?
Surely that gift – the gift of a world of human decency – is the one that all countries hunger for still.
The God of Thunder has fallen into the milk pail!
Any Danish citizen would die for King Christian, to protect him.
Frequently the new ones were damaged. They hobbled on canes or were ill. Sometimes they were disfigured by wounds or simply because they had been born that way. Some were orphans. All of them were welcomed.
There’s much more. There’s all that goes beyond – all that is Elsewhere – and all that goes back, and back, and back. I received all of those, when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future.” He rested for a moment, breathing deeply. “I am so weighted with them,” he said.
The guardians with their stern faces had no creative power. But they had strength and cunning, and they had found a way to steal and harness other people’s powers for their own needs. They were forcing the children to describe the future they wanted, not the one that could be.
Although he had through the memories learned about the pain of loss and loneliness, now he gained too, an understanding of solitude and its joy.
Now, seeing the newchild and its expression, he was reminded that the light eyes were not only a rarity but gave the one who had them a certain look – what was it? Depth, he decided; as if one were looking into the clear water of the river, down to the bottom, where things might lurk which hadn’t been discovered yet.
No one had told her what “birth” meant.
All of his strength and blood and breath were entering the earth now. His brain and spirit became part of the earth. He rose. He floated above, weightless, watching his human self labor and writhe. He gave himself to it willingly, traded himself for all that he loved and valued, and felt free.
But they don’t want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable-so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen.
Henrik, you need a wife,” Mama scolded him. Uncle Henrik laughed and joined Mama on the steps near the kitchen door. “Why do I need a wife, when I have a sister?
Definitely not safe,” Jonas said with certainty. “What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong? “Or what if,” he went on, almost laughing at the absurdity, “they chose their own jobs?” “Frightening, isn’t it?” The Giver said. Jonas.
Most of the people on the night crew had not even been given spouses because they lacked, somehow, the essential capacity to connect to others, which was required for the creation of a family unit.
The next morning, for the first time, Jonas did not take his pill. Something within him, something that had grown there through the memories, told him to throw the pill away.