The Giver

The landscape starts to change. The road narrows and becomes bumpy. Jonas falls off the bike and twists his ankle. It aches constantly. Since he has become “newly aware that Gabriel’s safety depended entirely upon his own continued strength” (172), he worries that the injury continues to bother him. Jonas and Gabriel see animals for the first time, and Gabriel mistakes a bird for an airplane, causing Jonas to panic and then laugh. Jonas begins to fear that he and the baby will starve since food is becoming hard to find. He remembers how meals were brought to the community each day and tries to ease his stomach pains with memories of feasts. He recalls a time when he said he was starving, and how his parents taught him that "hungry" (70) was the correct word. They told him he’d “never be starving” (173), but now he and Gabriel were because of his decision to leave the community. For a moment he thinks he was wrong to leave the security of his old life, but then he decides that he would have starved in other, less tangible ways if he had stayed. Plus, Gabriel wouldn’t have lived.