Messenger Themes

Messenger, the third installment of Lois Lowry's Giver Quartet, picks up several years after the close of Gathering Blue and follows Matty (Matt in Gathering Blue), who is now an adolescent. Matty now lives in Village, a settlement known for its kindness, generosity, and willingness to accept and help refugees from other settlements where inhabitants suffer at the hands of their governments—and often in the cases of people with disabilities, would face execution…

One thing that sets Village apart from the other settlements in the world of Messenger is that it's very interested in education. Specifically, Village seeks to educate its young people about the past and about the various places its refugees have come from, in an attempt to constantly remind people of what awful things are out there in the world and why the utopia of Village is worth fighting for. The events of Messenger show…

The non-native residents of Village are overwhelmingly those who have physical disabilities that in other settlements, like Leader's (Jonah) in The Giver or Matty's village in Gathering Blue, would spell death or abandonment for them. In Village, however, the guiding principle is that physical difference isn't anything to be ashamed of or something that should be "fixed"; indeed, Messenger implies at various points that physical difference is often a mark of emotional…