The Giver was ready.
He was no longer needed. The morning after Jonas left, the community had woken to the memories. The little children opened their eyes and clasped their hands to their ears. The newchildren stirred and began to fret. The Chief Elder remembered another failure like this one. Everywhere the people suffered, the way Jonas had, and the Giver had, and all the Receivers had suffered, back and back and back.
There would be no more Recievers. Or perhaps it was the other way around: everyone would be a Reciever.
The community felt anguish of a scope they had never imagined before. If Rosemary's memories had been like high tide, Jonas' memories were a tsunami. Hunger and plague devastated the community, yet everyone was well fed and in good health. War, that never before experienced horror, burned and ravaged its way across the minds of the adults. The community remembered, once again, that there is no love without heartbreak.
The Giver had needed to be there then, for the community.
Over the Speaker, the Giver's voice boomed, calm and quiet, an anchor the people could hold onto. He gave directions. The community obeyed. In the Auditorium, he announced that Jonas had drowned in the river. There was a silence. The Giver began to mourn Jonas, awkward against the quiet. "Jonas" the Giver began. "Jonas" the crowd chimed in. The chants grew soft, tapering down into whispers, fading entirely, until thre was only the faintest echo, a last tribute to the one who had sacrificed so that the community could redeem that essential, fragment of humanity they had lost. Only the Giver knew the truth, and he mourned the loss of Jonas most of all, yet he was the only one who knew that Jonas could be still alive. The feelings of the community were so limited, muffled by the Sameness that blanketed it. They had never known anguish. Now they knew.
The Giver began to speak in a soft voice. He told of the world that once was and the world that was. He spoke of other times and other places, different worlds that had existed. He taught that these times had left memories, and now that Jonas had died, the people would have to bear the memories themselves.
Slowly, the pain ebbed. The dreams washed in. The world was full of color, and there was so little life to be lived in the confines of the community. So the feeble rules that had governed life in the community were swept away.
The Giver was no longer needed. For a long time he had thought about his own Release. Before, it had been an escape from the pain of the memories and the wrongs of the community. Now, the Giver headed to the room of his Release-the last routine release in the community- with no regrets. He sat down on a simple whte bench, and the assistant handed him a syringe. The Giver plunged the syringe into his arm. Far away, in that moment, Jonas found the sled at the top of the hill waiting to carry him to the bright lights of the city. The Giver closed his eyes. In thirty seconds' time hee would be with Rosemary.
An English assignment from last year. . . we had to write another chapter, so the ending was my nerdy, must-get-an-A way of rebelling against the assignment, I suppose. (I did get an A, in case you are wondering) I know it might not make the most sense, but I was typing up old papers (on to google docs) who were part of the contents of my old laptop that was lost forever. . . And now I have fulfilled my beta reader quota. . . I've also begun rambling, so goodbye.
-runobody2
