Should Have Been Better

Author's note: My goal for this piece was to write an opinion essay while, breaking as many rules of an essay as I could. Please leave a comment telling me how many essay rules you think I broke and which rules I followed. At least I had a thesis statement. (I was laughing while writing that last sentence of my authors note)

The Giver by Lois Lowry ended like a steep hill. After climbing up the steep hill for days, I got to the top to realize that the only thing waiting for me was the edge of a cliff....and then nothing.

First the narrator is talking about a memory that Jonas is reviving and then it talks about how it's December and the ceremonies are going to start soon. It makes no sense why any author would do that. It should have been more gradual and the author should have extended the story longer. It was a good book and I was enjoying it. I personally didn't want the book to end and the second I caught on to what the author did, I wanted to throw the book across the room and yell at “NO! THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN!” Of course I couldn't do that though because, A: It probably would have hurt the book and 2: I was in the middle of my Language Arts class. If I did throw my book in the middle of class and yell what I wanted to; first, my teacher probably would have been shocked along with the my peers that were surrounding me. Second, my teacher would have asked “why did you do that?” Then I would have told her and she would either laugh and tell me to pick up the book or, she would have told me to pick up the book, give it to her so I couldn't abuse it anymore, and told me to take a break in the hall; doing all of this while laughing. Either way it would have been humorous to her and everyone else would be bewildered by my reaction to the book.

One thing I do like about the ending is, how, the author smoothly went from middle to end. It was such a smooth transition it took me until about the next two pages to realize she had started to bring the book to a closing. Another thing I didn't like was the ending itself. Not the how it transitioned into a steep, story like, hill when coming to and ending. No, it was how the ending went. It was basically The Giver saving food for Jonas. Then Jonas taking the food, then Jonas escaping with Gabriel. The book goes on about how Jonas's legs hurt really bad from all the biking that he does and how he has to hide from the search parties and how he gets weaker the farther that he gets away from the community.

My main dislike about the ending is the fact that it is so predictable. Through the whole story it explains everything that gets re-explained at the end of the book. The ending of The Giver just seems to drag on, and on, and on. And to be honest, I skipped about three to five pages towards the end because I knew what they were going to say and just basically skimmed through the entire ending because of how plain it was. The Giver is overall and interesting book with random twists and parts that make no sense no matter how hard you try to piece together (that's science fiction for you); the ending however, I absolutely 95% despised it, mainly because of the reasons I said before. All in all though, it was a genuine, cold, frustrating slope ending, book, that I would not mind reading again.....up until about three or four chapters to the end.