Each December Jonas’s community celebrates the advancement of all children. It’s kind of like everyone has a birthday on the same day. During each ceremony, all children born during a year advance to the next year and celebrate some kind of milestone. There is usually a gift involved. The gift highlights the changes that the children will be undergoing.
For example, the first ceremony takes place during the first December of a child’s life. Assuming the child makes it to December without being released, he or she will be given a name and assigned to a family. All babies are created through artificial means and given to foster families to raise until they reach adulthood. They are raised in an institutional setting until this first ceremony.
The Ceremony for the Ones was always noisy and fun. Each December, all the newchildren born in the previous year turned One. One at a time--there were always fifty in each year's group, if none had been released --they had been brought to the stage by the Nurturers who had cared for them since birth. (Ch. 2)
Most of the other early ceremonies are pretty boring, usually just involving new clothing. As the children grow, they are given new clothing at the ceremonies that demonstrates their new level of development. Jonas describes the ceremonies as boring. At Seven, they get a jacket with a “row of large buttons” down the front instead of the back, to help them be more independent. At Eight, children are given a jacket with pockets, so they can begin carrying their own possessions.
At Nine, the children are given a bicycle. This is one of the more significant gifts, because it is exciting and also symbolic of their newfound freedom. No one in the community has cars. All adults ride bikes, so the bike makes them more adult. Children are not really supposed to know how to ride them, but they all secretly learn how before the ceremony.
At Ten the children get more adult haircuts, to show they are growing up. The ceremony for Eleven is pretty boring too. It consists of new clothing for the children’s developing bodies. There is a hint of sexism here too, since the boys have pockets for calculators but the girls do not.
The Ceremony of Twelve is very important. At this ceremony, the children are assigned their job for life. No one in Jonas’s community picks their own job.
During the past year he had been aware of the increasing level of observation. … He knew, too, that the Elders were meeting for long hours with all of the instructors that he and the other Elevens had had during their years of school. (Ch. 2)
Jonas is quite surprised during his own ceremony when he is skipped. It turns out that his assignment is very rare. He is to be Receiver of Memory. This is the person who keeps all of the community’s memories and helps advise it on important decisions.
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