Layla Ahmed El Sharkawy November 16, 2021

The True Ending of the Giver (Final)

The ending of The Giver by Lois Lowry is not what most people think. In The Giver,

Jonas (the main character) is living in a perfect world with no problems—not even the pain of

a knee-scrape or the weight of making choices—when he is selected to be the person who

receives memories of the past & learns the truth about the Community and the history of the

world. He finds the most disruptive truths about the world and the Community and decides to

change things by escaping and giving his memories to everyone in the Community. The last

thing we see of Jonas is, after weeks of his bike journey with Gabriel, his baby brother, an

exhausted Jonas finds a sled and mounts it with Gabe, all while fighting hard to stay

conscious, and hears music and sees light in the distance. Some people interpret this as Jonas

finding Elsewhere, but a more likely interpretation of this ending is that Jonas is hallucinating

comforting memories as he dies slowly in the snow from overexertion, malnutrition, and

hypothermia. This is quite conceivable because of how the destruction of the world was

mentioned, how people hallucinate or relive memories before death, (or maybe get a glimpse

of heaven, but one wouldn’t know), and how bad Jonas and Gabriel’s conditions were right

before this event.

Firstly, it is unlikely that Jonas finds a safe place with Christmas lights because the

book mentions that the world was damaged and destroyed, and that memory took place ages

before the first Receiver of the Community was even born—leaving so much time for

humans to ruin everything. For example, “But the noise continued all around: the cries of the

wounded men, the cries begging for water and for Mother and for death. Horses lying on the

ground shrieked, raised their heads and stabbed randomly toward the sky with their hooves.”
Layla Ahmed El Sharkawy November 16, 2021

(113) This shows that the world was destroyed and how humanity became ruined and flawed

and lost in violence & war—just like the Community was, though in very different

ways—which proves there is no world outside to arrive to. Another example of the slow

decline of the world is, “Going closer, he watched them hack the tusks from a motionless

elephant on the ground and haul them away, spattered with blood.” (95) Even though

elephants are dying now, the comparison of the rapid decrease in wildlife and the incredibly

long time gap between now and the events of the Giver, there is probably little to no wildlife

in their world at that time (considering Jonas spends weeks in forests and doesn’t get eaten by

a lion or hyena). This makes the chances of human life—and much less a stable community

in “Elsewhere”—much slimmer for Jonas. This suggests that Jonas did not find a community

at all—he just dreamed it up as he died.

Dreaming things up and hallucinating is not uncommon for dying people, and

happens often in dystopian novels, which suggests that the vision of homes and Christmas

lights is a hallucination that Jonas dreamed of as he died, or perhaps his glimpse of heaven.

For example, the memory Jonas received is, “He was in a room filled with people, and it was

warm, with firelight glowing on a hearth. He could see through a window that outside it was

night, and snowing. There were colored lights: red and green and yellow, twinkling from a

tree which was, oddly, inside the room. [...] He could smell cooking, and he heard soft

laughter.” (116) This memory is the Giver’s favorite memory, then Jonas’s too. That shows

how the ending was too similar to this memory to be real and not just Jonas remembering this

time that was so long before his: before the destruction of the world and before the founding

of the Community. To further prove that, here is the “vision” he (Jonas) saw at the end:

“...and all at once, he could see the lights, and he recognized them now. They knew they were

shining through the windows of rooms, that they were red, blue, and yellow lights that
Layla Ahmed El Sharkawy November 16, 2021

twinkle from the trees in places where families created and kept memories, where they

celebrated love.” (168) This shows how his hallucination is so identical to the memory that it

probably is just a memory and isn’t seen directly by Jonas or proven to be there. This makes

it a hallucination or a glimpse of heaven right before death, which further proves how Jonas

and Gabe died from their poor health–and is even more conceivable when the conditions of

their health are thoroughly investigated.

Jonas and Gabriel were having really inadequate nutrition while exerting so much

effort and trying to maintain homeostasis in the freezing weather they aren’t accustomed to or

prepared for, and all of that is foreshadowing to their deaths. For example, “Gabiel, wrapped

in his inadequate blacket, was hunched, shivering, and silent in his little seat. Jonas stopped

the bile wearily, lifted the child down, and realized with heartbreak how cold and weak Gabe

had become.” (164). This shows how dangerously poor their condition was, and how close

they were to dying of hunger and weakness and scarcity of energy, which further suggests

they did die at the end. Another example is, “But when the memory glimpse subsided, he was

left with gnawing, painful emptiness. [...] You have never been starving, he had been told.

You will never be starving. Now he was.” (162) This shows how little nourishment he and

Gabriel were getting, and how inconceivable it was for them to make it all the way to the

dream town in that condition. This malnutrition was the most likely reason for their

unconsciousness in the snow at the end of the story that was their inevitable death.

Now, it is proven how evidence leans towards the world being destroyed and not

containing a community that is undamaged and functional, Jonas most likely hallucinating

the last part of his life, and the unlikeliness that Jonas and Gabriel can still be alive after

living for so long in such harsh conditions and making it through the symptoms showing their
Layla Ahmed El Sharkawy November 16, 2021

unhealthiness. Therefore, the most accurate way to interpret the ending is this: Jonas and

Gabriel succeed in giving their memories to the Community after exiting its borders by far

more than necessary. But all they find outside is nature in the same position as the

Community: isolated, just starting to recover itself from all the damage humanity has done.

Forests are growing and some animals are appearing. Jonas and Gabe didn’t see a sign of

human life anywhere. After weeks or maybe months, Jonas and Gabriel finish their supply of

food and barely make it with scraps they can manage to scavenge from the wild with their

non-existent survival skills. After days in the cold, snowy hills, Jonas and Gabriel sink down

in the snow while hallucinating feebly making it to an abandoned sled—the same sled from

the first memory—and lose consciousness while dreaming of their favorite memory: the

Christmass family one, the one that they might be going to in heaven. They die peacefully

from starvation, over exertion, and hypothermia, leaving the mystery of Elsewhere behind.