Most Tupelo High School students read the book “The Giver” for English in the eighth grade. In my opinion, it was a really good book, but to others not so much. Now there’s the movie, “The Giver” directed by Phillip Noyce. I went to see it and it was just as good as the book, if not better.

The book is about a 12-year-old boy named Jonas who lives in a world completely controlled by humans. There’s climate control and color control, as in they see everything in black and white. They have strict rules about being polite. They have to say please and thank you, can never lie and must always say “I apologize” if needed.

Jonas is given a job, which is to be the Receiver. The Receiver gets all the memories from his mentor, the previous Giver, so that he can pass on wisdom to the elders when they’re in need of knowledge. The more he’s with the Giver, the more secrets he learns about the world he lives in, an example being that if babies don’t meet a required weight, their society kills them.

Then one day his dad brings home Gabriel, and tries to help him grow so he won’t have to get “released” as they call it, which means to die. So when Gabriel doesn’t reach requirement, he’s sent back to the nurturing center and is scheduled for release. Jonas gets close to Gabriel and decides he wants to make a change by running off and leaving the community, which would release all the memories from himself and send them to his people.

In the movie, Jonas is a 16-year-old and his world is the same as in the book, but most of the stuff wasn’t added in the movie. For example, the citizens had strict rules about doing certain things in their households, which wasn’t shown in the movie. Taking pills to stop feeling emotions was in the book, but it was changed to injections in the movie. Telling dreams in the morning and sharing feelings at dinner time was mandatory in the book. The movie didn’t have dream tellings.

There were things that were similar as well. Like the Receivers and Givers all had the same eyes, as mentioned in the book. This trait was explained differently than from in the book, however. In the book, Lilly, Jonas’ sister, points out that Gabriel has light eyes just like Jonas, while everybody else has dark eyes, and later on in the book we learn that the Giver also has light eyes. In the movie, Jonas simply says that he can tell by his eyes that he and Gabriel are alike.

Then Fiona and Jonas fall in love. The movie then has the Giver showing Jonas music, whereas in the book he keeps it to himself. Another added scene has Jonas trying to show Fiona how it feels to ride a sled by sliding down the stairs using trays.

In my opinion, the movie “The Giver” was really good. It showed what I think the point of the book was. We have so much to be thankful for. We have the privileges of so many things that those in the giver didn’t have. If we make the right decisions and not take advantage of them in wrong ways.