The Giver: Jonas as Christ Figure (The José Post)

When you have been teaching for a long time, sometimes you get the feeling that you have seen/heard it all, especially if your curriculum has you teaching the same things for a long time.  I don't mean that in an 'I'm bored and jaded' kind of way.  I just mean that you get to the point where you hear a lot of the same ideas from students.  It's still exciting to see students reach conclusions that you might have heard before because you see the intellectual steps they have had to climb to reach that point, but again, if you have been teaching the same content you often hear similar ideas.

Thus it went with The Giver by Lois Lowry.  It's a book that was part of our curriculum for a long time but with very good reason.  The book is really one of the first utopian/dystopian novels written for a young audience.  This may seem insignificant today since we are virtually drowning in the genre today, but Lowry was a pioneer.  She explored the concept of what a 'perfect' society is, what choices we make to create one, and what it means to be truly human.  What's more (and a reason that it's one of my favourite of the genre) is that these questions don't play out in some violent struggle between factions but rather in the conflicted mind of an intelligent adolescent boy.

When they read the book on their own, many students like it but don't love it, but when we do it as a class, they tend to get really into it.  Or at the very least, they love the arguments and discussions that go with it.  There is nothing like hearing twelve year olds furiously debating:

• What murder is
• What it means to be human
• Whether the individual matters more than the group
• Whether sacrificing personal freedom is worth it to ensure health and safety for all
• Whether it is possible to be happy in a world without suffering

To be honest, it is profoundly moving.  If you've never had the chance, you're missing out.

This past year [I've had this post on my list of things to write for a while.], however, something new happened.  I was reading some student writing about the book and came to a sudden, stunned halt.  José, an unusually thoughtful, insightful student, likened the main character, Jonas, to Jesus Christ.  He saw in Jonas's burden of memories a similar burden to that carried by Jesus when he died for the sins of other people.  I was speechless to read one of the most original thoughts about the book I had seen in years.  Actually, let's be frank- it was the most original thought I had seen about the book.  EVER.  

José went on to explain his thinking in his usual way - beautiful phrasing and eloquent connections to his examples - but the thing that stood out was the level at which he was thinking.  I'm not religious, and in general religion did not come into the class discussion about the book, so when José reached that conclusion, it was totally independently.  It also reminded me that there is nothing like teaching. There is nothing like seeing ideas emerge from the churning minds of young people - people who are often dismissed as obsessed with themselves or obsessed with thing or obsessed with technology.  

Give them the right opportunities and they are capable of the profound.  Thanks for that reminder, Joselito.