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Chapter 14
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Giver, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Individual vs. Society
Freedom and Choice
Feeling and Emotion
Coming of Age
Memory
Summary
Analysis
The next day The Giver is in terrible pain, and he asks Jonas to take the memory he is having. He gives Jonas a memory of a war, a battlefield and men injured and dying. In the memory, Jonas is a young man who gives another badly injured solider water and then stays with the other soldier as he dies. Jonas is himself injured, and the pain he feels is horrifying. Afterward, The Giver is repentant and asks Jonas to forgive him, although they both know that The Giver didn't have the strength to carry the memory himself any longer.
The war scene shows Jonas the best and worst of humankind. Just as the young man cares for the injured soldier, Jonas is himself caring for The Giver, courageously taking on The Giver's troubling memory in order to spare him pain.
Themes
