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Lois Lowry's The Giver

Decent Essays

Before Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States in 1959, author Lois Lowry (born Lois Ann Hammersberg) was born to American parents in 1937 while her father was an Army dentist stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her mother, Katherine was a school teacher. As with many career military families during that era, Lois' family moved to many locations within the U.S and to other countries.
Ms. Lowry describes herself, “I was a solitary child, born the middle of three, who lived in the world of books and my own imagination. There are some children, and I was this kind of child, who are introverts and love to read — who prefer to curl up with a book than to hang out with friends or play at the ball field. Children like that begin to develop a feeling for language and for story. And that was true for me — that's how I became a writer”.

In 1954, Lois Lowry began her higher educational studies at Pembroke College in Brown University. Pembroke College, located in Providence, Rhode Island, was the women's college for Brown University. In order for women to attend that university, this type of structure was implemented. Brown University itself was still a men's college, with other major collegiate institutions being fashioned in …show more content…

She came up with the idea for the book after visiting her father in a retirement home. He had lost almost all of his long term memory. Lois then realized that without memory, there wouldn’t be the pain of knowing that you have lost something. She imagined a society where the past was deliberately forgotten, which would allow the inhabitants to live in a kind of peaceful ignorance. The flaws inherent in such a society, she realized, would show the value of individual and community memory; although the loss of memory might mean a loss in pain, it also means a loss of lasting human relationships and connections with the

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