Bonus Mini-Review: The Giver

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is read by tens of thousands of middle schoolers each year. It is by no means obscure, and thanks to it being on the reading list of many an English classes, there has probably been more words written about The Giver than there are plankton in the sea. What I want to focus on is the language of The Giver.

In The Giver, humanity has solved all the problems. All of them. But not without a heavy cost. A perfect tranquil existence has been obtained only by draining people of their history, of their passions, and of their freedom. The whole world has been reshaped to reflect this uniform, sterile society. This is not to say everyone is an identical zombie. People superficially feel emotions and they have all sorts of different jobs based on their personalities.

The book is written by a young teen, Jonah, who is a regular member of this utopia. The way he thinks, the conversations he has, all reflect the pleasant flatness of his community. Usually, flat dialogue is something to be avoided, but in The Giver the text is chilling. People talk like a careful ten year old laid out each of their words . Even the wisest person on the planet, the man burdened with the collective history of mankind, talks in the same polite complete sentences. And not by accident. Precision in language is drilled into all members of the community at an early age. More than any exposition in the book, the way the story is written gives us the most detail about the setting.

In a way, the language of The Giver is similar to Newspeak in 1984. Newspeak is a recent invention in 1984 created as a sort of linguistic thought control. It is a dumbing down of language so that eventually people will no longer be able to express complex ideas. Newspeak is in it's infancy in 1984 and not very effective- after all the main characters seem to have no trouble expressing philosophical principles. The Giver gives us view into a world that has been using Newspeak forever. In The Giver no one needs ever have a conversation about vague topics such as politics or ethics. Their language is one of perfect clarity where wishy-washy concepts are difficult to express. Because everyone is taught to use unambiguous language they end up thinking unambiguous, uncomplicated thoughts.

Love is impossible to precisely define. So love does not exist in the world of The Giver.

Riddley Walker

Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban, is not a book to pick up casually and read in an afternoon. It is very much an "advanced reading" novel. The entire thing is written in a made up language: a hodge-podge corrupt version of English. Riddley Walker isn't Ulysses but that doesn't mean it is the easiest book to parse out. From the first chapter, "On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar..." The whole book is written in this fashion. Words are often meant to be sounded out. So you have been warned. There will be times when reading Riddley Walker that you will be confused as to what's actually being said.  But I found that I quickly picked up the 'language' of the book. It is intimidating but by no means impossible for anyone to read Riddley Walker.

Understanding the story is a little harder though. This is one of those rare books where I'm honestly not sure if I 'got it.' For a tale set among the pathetic dirty inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic England, Riddley Walker is surprisingly philosophical. But then part of what makes the book so interesting to read is that it keeps changing. The beginning of the story seems totally disconnected from science fiction. Later psychic mutants show up though, so there is that. Also humorously corrupt 'Punch and Judy' shows. And running throughout- woven into the stream of though telling of events- are trippy quasi-religious visions. Because the narrator (the eponymous Riddley) is simply relating things and thoughts that have occurred to him it becomes hard to parse out reality and radiation borne madness.

Riddley Walker is just as interested in hashing out ideas about government and god as he is adventuring through shelled out Cambridge. But a devolved cockney language simply isn't good enough to make out the entirety of these long discussions. So a cloud of ambiguity hangs over everything in the book. This is intentional. One of the most important phrases in the book revels in this haziness, namely, "The hart/heart of the would/wood." The rambling tone and weird way time seems to work in the book make the whole experience feel hallucinatory. This could be a positive or negative depending on how you feel about balls out weirdness in your stories, story structures, and content.

If you are looking for a challenge, a book that boldly bucks convention and defies expectations then Riddley Walker is the book for you. I honestly enjoyed it. But it most definitely is not for everyone. Sometimes though... the struggle is part of the fun.

Riddley Walker gets 1 littl 1 of the 1 Big 1.