I'm with you Kiddo. The Giver is one of those books - one of the only, if not the only - that I want to revisit every few years. The layers in the book are so stirring.
Sorry for your confusion, Al! I'd recommend reading "The Giver" by LL. It's pretty short, definitely not a difficult read, but very provocative!
To perhaps tease your imagination, think of it this way. Jonas is an twelve-year-old boy who has grown up in a place called the Community. There is no such thing as color, music, or dance. To save people from the grief of real emotions, scientists engineered, long before Jonas was born, a way to restrict choice and emotion in humans. Thus, all decisions for the people are made by the leaders of the community. They decide everything, from whom one raises a family with to what one's profession is. Everything is carefully planned out by the Elders of the community, right down to the month of conception for children. There is no such thing as pain, or anger, or sadness, and there is no collective memory of what the world was like before the Community arose. People do not have choice.
When Jonas and all the other eleven-year-olds turn twelve this month, they're assigned their particular professions. Jonas is selected for the most special assignment and profession - to become the new Receiver who will succeed the current Receiver. A Receiver of Memories is the most revered person in the community, but he or she also leads a solitary life. He or she is the one person in the community who has access to all the memories of the past. He must keep these memories within himself until he can train a new Receiver to whom he can pass them. Thus, the Receiver has knowledge of things that no one in the community has access to, and he has the wisdom of ages past. The Elders, when they're really stuck about what decision they should make on an important matter, consult the Giver for his wisdom. That is his purpose - to guide the Elders in making difficult decisions. But the Receiver also has the responsibility to shoulder the burden of sorrow and pain that the memories bring, and he must bear this burden for his entire life, completely alone.
And everything else you'll have to read about. God, it's such a good book.
Crap, I didn't even know there was a series to The Giver. Are they like sequels, or spin-offs? Hmm. I may read the other two!
