~ Chapter 13 ~

In chapter thirteen, Jonas is upset at the fact that since there is no color in the world, then no one can make choices of there own. No one can choose whether they want to wear a blue shirt or a green one. Everything is the same. Even though what you wear is not important, choosing your job and your mate is. So basically you are being treated like a baby, who can not make decisions for themselves, but both Jonas and the Giver agree that it is much safer, because there is no chance to make the wrong decision.

In this chapter, the Giver gives Jonas a painful and sad memory of poachers.

'He could hear noises: the sharp crack of weapons - he perceived the word guns - and then shouts, and an immense crashing thud as something fell,tearing branches from the trees.

He heard voices calling to one another. Peering from the place where he stood hidden behind some shrubbery, he was reminded of what the Giver had told him, that there had been a time when flesh had different colors. Two of these men had dark brown skin; the others were light. Going closer, he watched them hack the tusks from a motionless elephant an the ground and haul them away, spattered with blood. He felt himself overwhelmed with a new perception of the color he knew as red.

The men were gone, speeding toward the horizon in a vehicle that spit pebbles from its whirling tires. One hit his forehead and stung him there. But the memory continued, though Jonas ached now for it to end.

Now he saw another elephant emerge from the place where it had stood hidden in the trees. Very slowly it walked to the mutilated body and looked down. With its sinuous trunk it stroked the huge corpse; then it reached up, broke some leafy branches with a snap, and draped them over the mass of torn thick flesh.

Finally it tilted its massive head, raised its trunk, and roared into the empty landscape. Jonas had never heard such a sound. It was a sound of rage and grief and it seemed never to end.'

In this chapter the Giver and Jonas talk about how everyone is giving Jonas the burden of holding the memories so they do not have to.