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Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel The Giver has garnered a wide audience over the past two decades, since it has become a standard text in middle schools and high schools across the English-speaking world.
With the enormous success of the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games films, Hollywood has been busy adapting books written for the young adult audience. The most recent is the movie version of The Giver, produced by Jeff Bridges and starring Bridges and Meryl Streep.
Having never heard of the novel, I came at the film with no expectations, and I confess I was surprised both by the power of its societal critique and its implicit Christian themes.
Seemingly perfect city
The story is set in a seemingly utopian city, where there is no conflict, no inequality, and no stress. The streets are laid out in a perfectly symmetrical grid, the buildings are clean, and people dress in matching outfits and ride bicycles so as not to pollute the environment.