Question

What is the core conflict in "The Giver"? What exactly is the problem that Jonas has to solve?

Answer 1

Hint: In The Giver, Jonas, the main character, is confronted with a number of issues. Jonas, the lead character in Lois Lowry's novel The Giver, is twelve years old.

Complete answer:
In The Giver, Jonas, the main character, is confronted with a number of issues. That said, the main issue he faces, and then flees from, is that the elders of the society in which he lives have taken a joint agreement to hide knowledge from the rest of the population.

The information they hide from them is information that we now believe to be important to a safe way of life, not only for people, but also for societies as a whole, in our own culture.

Jonas' current job as a receiver requires him to obtain things that the rest of the world is not permitted to hear, and the mental weight and responsibility of this knowledge becomes too much for him to bear.
He decides he no longer wants to be a member of such a society, and his only option is to leave.

The elders have agreed to hide one piece of knowledge from everyone: how death happens. In the novel, the procedure is very sanitised and secretive, to the point that only a few people realise what happens at the end of life. This is referred to as "release" by the community, and a small celebration of life is held, but the individual then merely leaves the community.

Doctors and elders understand what "release" is, but the majority of people are ignorant of the death process. This is just one case of information that is kept hidden from the ordinary citizen.

As a result, Jonas has a dilemma in that he learns things that the rest of his society does not have and will never be able to know. Jonas is also emotionally burdened by the knowledge, and he only has the Giver with whom he can express his feelings, isolating him from his friends.

This responsibility eventually becomes too much for him to handle, and he chooses to abandon his life rather than survive and choose and survive alone. Leaving is a big gamble because he has no idea what lies beyond the community's walls, but it's seen as a better option than staying.

Note: The main issue Jonas has is that he is given a lucrative apprenticeship during which he receives hidden knowledge about his culture, and then he discovers that his people are doing horrible things to make others happy.