Chapter Summary: The Giver

1. Jonas: Jonas is an upstander. Before his Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas didn’t put much thought into Releases. Yet after becoming a Receiver of Memory, Jonas gets memories about colors, music, death, love, pain, family, war and much much more. When Jonas sees his first Release, he realizes that his community is messed up and needs help. Jonas understands that people in his community have no understanding of love, death, family, etc. Jonas sees a situation, and takes a personal risk to go away so that his memories flee him and go into the people of the community. Jonas knows that outside his town he might not survive, but he still decides to change the situation. Thus, Jonas is an upstander.

2. The Giver: The Giver is both an upstander and a bystander. Before Jonas became a
“Giver-in-training”, the Giver was a bystander. The Giver was a bystander because he saw what happened when people were “Released”. The Giver saw through the utopian facade of their government, yet he did not do anything to change the Releases or the functioning of the society. For example, when the Giver saw Rosemary’s Release, or even before that, he could have stopped it. Maybe the Giver could’ve ran away from the society with Rosemary. Yet the Giver did nothing even though he saw a situation happening with knowledge of the past, no emotions, and Releases in the
Jonas’s father: Jonas’s father is neither a bystander nor an upstander. Jonas's father is not an upstander because he did not take a personal risk to change or stop a situation. The situation that was happening was the killings of babies (!) just because they didn't conform to the society’s rules or other small tidbits. Jonas's father didn’t see a situation only because he has no idea of the concept of death and killing. Thus, without understanding what he is doing, Jonas's father killed babies all while thinking he is “Releasing” it. Jonas's father is not an upstander then because he did nothing to stop the