The Giver: Won't Somebody Think of the Teachers!

Movies based on popular books don’t tend to ruffle too many feathers with teachers. Here, we have a movie based on a curricular classic. The Giver is an institutional right of passage in oh so many middle schools. I’m picturing a lot of english teachers with arms crossed indignantly as the opening credits roll. As if it were a function of some sort of teacher’s hippocratic oath, the prevailing wisdom sounds something like, “If you see the movie first, you’ll ruin the book.” There’s no question, adaptations fall on a continuum. So will The Giver movie cause teachers to be skeptical of whether their students are actually reading, or will they show it in class?

Make no mistake, this is a tough story to adapt. The pacing revolves around building life in a society centered around the question utopian or dystopian? It’s emotionally driven and the ambiguous ending is one of the most infamous in children’s literature. Tall drink. Good thing we’ve got The Dude. More than just Bridges, there wasn’t a character on that screen that I didn’t emotionally respond to. Even Taylor Swift’s cameo was spot on (great casting, you should have seen the enthusiasm her built in fan base brought to the premiere). Visually, the dynamic coloration held my attention when the pacing slowed. The Hollywood updates (drones) were a completely believable layer seamlessly fitting into the original story. The only major variance was the ending, which Betsy Bird nicely pointed out, still nods its cap to the text. 

While I still think the story’s lasting allure could be attributed to the debate about the ending’s ambiguity, the movie handled what could have been a major faux pas with dignity. Juxtaposing the hunt for Jonas with Fiona’s impending “release” built incredible tension that reached an impeccable crescendo through an interspersed societal debate between Bridges and Streep. 

So, should educators insist that students read The Giver before seeing the movie? Most people who have read a book end up balking at the film. So why not watch an enjoyable film in class first? Not only can students still discuss the content of the story, but I’d argue that discussing what they wished the film depicted puts them in a better position to analyze the writing and structure. Especially for those students who haven’t developed the patience for a slower paced book. Will seeing the movie detract from a student’s creating their own world based on the text? The movie adaptation of Holes didn’t prevent any of my students from altering their version of Stanley when they discovered his character in the book was vastly different from the film. Why do our students jump to which is better when, by examining the nuances of adaptations, they could be thinking deeper about the merits of text?