Abstract
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.
