Jonas, almost twelve, waits for the December Ceremony and worries about his Assignment. We learn the community's basic rules: precision of language, controlled behavior, mandatory sharing of feelings at dinner.

Jonas's father brings home infant Gabriel, who is struggling to develop on schedule. The family discusses the history and logic of community rules, including the Naming and release procedures.

Jonas notices a strange quality in an apple — something flickers and changes. At the community center, he witnesses the same flickering in Fiona's hair. He doesn't have the word for what he's seeing.

Jonas completes volunteer hours at various facilities. He experiences his first 'Stirrings' — a sexual dream — and is relieved when his parents give him the pill that suppresses them.

The December Ceremony arrives. Jonas watches his peers receive their Assignments. When his number is skipped by the Chief Elder, he feels a public exposure unlike anything he has known. He is named Receiver of Memory.

Jonas receives his assignment folder. The rules are unlike any others in the community: he may lie, he may ask any question, he must not discuss his training, and he may not apply for release.

Jonas begins training with The Giver. He receives his first memories: snow, sledding, sunshine. Then sunburn. For the first time, he experiences color — and learns what Elsewhere means.

Jonas receives memories of grandparents, holidays, music, and the first serious pain — a broken leg. He begins to understand what the community traded away.

The Giver transmits the memory of a battlefield. Jonas experiences war — death, suffering, the dying of a young soldier who calls for his mother — and emerges from training shaking and weeping.

Jonas watches a recording of his father administering a lethal injection to a twin infant deemed unnecessary by the community. The word 'release' is destroyed as a euphemism, permanently.

The Giver and Jonas devise a plan: Jonas will flee the community, his memories will dissolve back into the population, and The Giver will stay to guide the people through the chaos. When Jonas learns Gabriel will be released the next morning, he acts immediately.

Jonas and Gabriel travel through cold and hunger toward a hill Jonas recognizes from a transmitted memory. He sleds down it through snow toward warmth and music below — and the novel ends without confirming whether they arrive.