The Giver is such a stunning example of fantasy blended with science fiction and the idea of a utopian society that it is hard to pick a place to begin when discussing the work.

The story is established in another world; the world is not named but it is intricately described.  It is a world of extreme order, of sameness, of predictability.  Each year of ones life is prescribed for you and there are no choices in ones life.  All things are pre-determined (such as weather, career, number of children in a family, ones name).  It seems like it could be or is supposed to be a utopian society, but for the reader, it can quickly be seen that it is a world gone wrong - an attempt at perfection and order that has fallen extremely short.

The Giver has other elements of fantasy such as the seemingly magical powers of the Receiver of Memories to transmit memories to Jonas.  These elements of magic are not in the same spirit of the magic of Harry Potter, however, they can be considered magical elements of the story.  They could also be elements of science fiction and a variation on time travel.  The Giver must have a way of transmitting memories and of allowing Jonas to experience the world, or Elsewhere, as he never has.  In The Giver, the lines between the past and present and the lines of space and time are bent, allowing events to take place that normally could not.

The Giver also battles good verses evil.  The evil, however, is more of a concept than any given person.  It may seem that Jonas's father is evil for releasing the twin baby with the lower birth weight and pretending as though the baby will live on Elsewhere.  But as the Giver insistenly points out, it is the only way of live Jonas's father knows.  He is incapapbe of knowing the truth of his actions because of the community in which he lives.  The evil represented in The Giver is the fight against uniqueness, individuality, and choices - the very things that make the world a wonderful and interesting place to live.  The evil that Jonas the the Giver are fighting is the standard quo in their world.  They risk everything to show their community the truth about life and to force them to see things they have forced out for so many years...."back and back and back." 

Jonas is a heroic figure because he is a part of this other world yet he decides to leave it, taking baby Gabe with him.  The choice is not an easy one, but it is the necessary one.  Jonas described it well in the final stages of the book, when he and Gabe are in a snowy field, cold and literally starving.  He remembers that he would never have been starving [for food] had he never left his home.  But he would have starved in so many other ways.  He would have "lived a life hungry for feelings, color, love."