Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction argues that there are alternative narratives to the one of the hero. She uses Elizabeth Fisher’s idea that the first cultural tool was a bag to carry items to say that a novel is also a carrier bag. “A book holds words. Words hold things” (Le Guin 169). A story can be told without a major, violent conflict in which there is a winner and a loser. Throughout Le Guin’s explanation of this, she relates the metaphorical bag to a more feminine based narrative, suggesting that the hero narrative is a male narrative. This connects to the idea of the yang-yin symbol being relevant in thinking about utopias and dystopias presented in Le Guin’s essay “How to Build a New Kind of Utopia”. She explains that “Yang is male, bright, dry, hard, active, penetrating. Yin is female, dark, wet, easy, receptive, containing. Yang is control, yin acceptance.” (Leguin). Within her essay, Le Guin asks the question of what makes a yin based dystopia or utopia. This line of thinking paired with The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction calls for more feminine literature. By using these ideas to examine Lois Lowry’s The Giver, it becomes a story with patriarchal values, despite Lowry’s attempts to prevent that through the lack of sexuality and wisdom within the society.
Lowry attempts to write a society in which all people are in relatively equal standing through the idea of “Sameness”, which is presented in the The Giver as a decision to make all people and things as similar as possible. This results in a community where there are no power structures that rely on gender, race, or class to create inequalities. Because of this lack of uniqueness to the characters, it makes the main character, Jonas, and his experiences matter to the story that much more. This opposes the ideas presented by Le Guin because this inherently makes the novel more male focused.
The Giver contrasts with Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory because it relies on a male character to be a hero. However, Le Guin’s theory does offer a way of viewing Jonas as a container. Through his role as “Receiver of Memory” Jonas is a container by holding the burden of experiences for the rest of the society. This aligns with Virginia Woolf’s definition of hero as Le Guin explains: “she had thought of reinventing English according to a new plan, in order to tell a different story. One of the entries in this glossary is heroism, defined as ‘botulism.’ And hero, in Woolf's dictionary, is ‘bottle’”. (Leguin 166). This definition allows for a view in which Jonas is saving his community by retaining the memories the people don’t want, placing Jonas as the hero within the novel.
As Jonas receives the memories of the past, he becomes more mature. This maturation leads to him being more of a man than a child. Within the community all the people are sexless beings due to the “The Pill” that nullifies sexual desire. Through the memories, Jonas begins to gain a better understanding of emotions and feelings, and makes the decision to not take his pill. As he does this, he begins to see the females in his community differently. The language used to describe his female friend, Fiona, becomes more focused on his attraction to her rather than her value to the society. “Jonas looked at her. She was so lovely” (Lowry 169). Fiona’s function within the book seems to be that of a love interest, which is supported by the fact that her existence was the initiation of Jonas taking the pills in the first place. This lack of developed female characters supports the argument that The Giver is a male dominated hero narrative.
Before Jonas begins to receive memories, the society embodied a balanced yang-yin symbol. The rules representing the controlling yang and the people representing the accepting yin. Jonas learning to criticize the rules breaks the yang-yin balance. Instead, the yang and yin come through in the environment. “Good citizens of utopia consider the wilderness dangerous, hostile, unlivable; to an adventurous or rebellious dystopian it represents change and freedom. In this I see examples of the intermutability of the yang and yin: the dark mysterious wilderness surrounding a bright, safe place” (Leguin). In Jonas’ journey as the hero, his goal changes. He rejects the role of hero as the container to fulfill the role of savior of baby Gabriel. When Jonas discovers that Gabriel is to be released, meaning euthanized, he takes the baby and leaves the community to search for a better place. This choice by Jonas can be viewed as a choice of Lowry to write a story that prioritizes the hero.