The Giver: From the Paper to the Movie Screen and from Harmony to Nightmare

Abstract

This article focuses mainly on reflecting on the media relation (adaptation) between the book and the movie The Giver. Such reflection is based on literature and film scholars and on memory theorists (individual, social, collective). In both narratives – literary and filmic – it is showcased the drama that main character Jonas experiences from the eve of the Ceremony of Twelve to his training as a Recipient of Memory. This rare social function, unlike the others, foresees diverse and intense pains, as well as the experience of varied feelings, due to the experience with reminiscences and memories interdicted to the rest of the village-city community, where the spatial organization is tied to the biopolitical control of the small population, the collective welfare, and the social actions are directed by the Committee of Elders. By comparing both artworks, it is possible to identify elements of an improved, utopian society, intermingled with dystopian elements, with wide-ranging interdiction of knowledge and wisdom that shake established truths. There is a destabilization of the subjectivity of the protagonist, the one chosen for the new Guardian, in the apprenticeship with the official Memory Receiver, the Elder Donor, and a rupture of his identity with the current social order, with the fracture of the utopian ideal and the experience of a dystopian nightmare.