The Giver now includes pain in Jonas' everyday training, and, finally, Jonas receives the worst memory of all: the memory of warfare and death. During this memory, he watches a "wild-eyed horse, its bridle torn and dangling, [trot] frantically through the mounds of men, tossing its head, whinnying in panic." Jonas gives water to a wounded boy in the warfare memory and sees the boy die, a "dull blankness [sliding] slowly across his eyes. He was silent." Jonas has experienced human death for the first time.
After receiving these memories, Jonas changes. He feels frustrated and angry as he realizes that his life will never be "ordinary" again. He experiences an inner conflict: On one hand, he wants to go back to the old, insulated, familiar way of life; on the other hand, he knows that he can't. He has learned too much and gained too much wisdom, and he now knows that life is meaningless without memories. He can never again settle for Sameness. Also, he is angry and frustrated because he wants to change things for his peers, but he doesn't know how. He realizes that if his friends and family would receive memories and thereby share the burden of the pain, then their lives would be rich and fulfilled. It frustrates him that they are satisfied with their painless, colorless, routine lives.
Jonas also has a conflict with the entire community. The Giver tells him that the people "don't want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable — so painless. It's what they've chosen." Jonas has a difficult time understanding why people would choose to live their lives as unthinking, unfeeling robots, preferring that way of life because it is safe and secure over individuality and the freedom to make choices and, yes, even mistakes.
