After a long journey toward freedom, Jonas and Gabe are freezing and starving. In a horrible, blinding snowstorm, Jonas discovers a sled on top of a hill, just like in a memory that he earlier received from The Giver. Jonas and Gabe get on the sled and begin sliding downhill toward their "final destination." Jonas sees Christmas lights and hears music and singing. He knows that joy, love, and memories lie ahead, but Lowry ends the novel just when we expect her to tell us whether or not Jonas and Gabe reach the town below and what then happens to them.
What happens to Jonas and Gabe? Do they die? Is the sled ride a dream? Do they end up in a different community and find love and joy? Does Jonas' community change? Do Jonas and Gabe end up back in the community that they left? We don't know. The ambiguous ending of The Giver has been compared to the ending of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," in which the main character, a poor little girl, sees Christmas decorations — tinsel and colored balls — and a table laden with food. In Andersen's story, the little match girl freezes to death, but Andersen suggests that she is far happier, for she is "far away where there is neither cold, hunger, or pain." We have to wonder: Could Jonas and Gabe possibly be experiencing a similar kind of euphoria before they, like the little match girl, freeze to death?
Lowry intentionally ends The Giver ambiguously to allow each reader to create an individual ending according to that person's own beliefs, hopes, dreams, and experiences. Therefore, every ending is the "right" ending, and every reader, like Jonas, must make a choice. By focusing on Jonas' escape from his community, Lowry portrays how important language, words, freedom of speech, and choice are to the value of the individual, to every society, and to the world in which we live.
