Submission And Repression In A Dystopia: An Althusserian Reading Of The Giver

Lois Lowry’s The Giver, a 1994 Newbery Medal winner, is a highly acclaimed dystopian novel for young adults. Due to its canonical status, much scholarly work has focused on its themes and genre conventions. However, this paper aims to offer another perspective on how individuals are controlled in the novel’s society by adopting Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology and ideological state apparatuses (ISAs). By reading The Giver through an Althusserian lens of ideology, I try to lay bare the mechanism of how individuals are constituted as subjects who freely accept their submission to the ruling ideology. I argue that individuals are just bearers of positions in the social system and that individuals are constituted as subjects who accept the ruling ideology as natural, true, and normal. Through the protagonist’s reflections on and resistance to the society he lives in, Lois Lowry offers a critique of the seemingly ideal but oppressive society in the novel.