Another important theme in The Giver is the value of the individual. Lowry points out that when people are unable to experience pain, their individuality is devalued. Memories are so vital because they oftentimes include pain, and pain is an individual reaction: What is painful to one person might not be painful to another person. Also, people learn from memories and gain wisdom from remembering past experiences.
Life in Jonas' community is very routine, predictable, and unchanging. So are most of the people who live in the community. These characters are uncomplicated and complacent. They are static, simple, one-dimensional characters. Because the majority of them do not change throughout the novel, we see only one part of their personalities — their surface appearances and actions. Nothing happens within static characters; things happen to them.
Most of the citizens in the community passively follow the rules of the community. They always do what they are told. Nothing has ever happened to them except when an earlier Receiver-in-training, Rosemary, asked for release because she no longer could tolerate living in the community. After her death, the people were in total chaos because they didn't know what to do with the memories that Rosemary had experienced. They were not accustomed to thinking for themselves. Experiencing Rosemary's memories was something that happened to the people. Afterward, they resumed their lives as before, so it is evident that nothing permanently changed within them.
