Messenger: Chapters 1-4

by Lois Lowry
In the third book of The Giver Quartet, award-winning author Lois Lowry tells the story of Matty, who risks his life to save his village. Along the way, Matty receives guidance from Leader (Jonas from The Giver) and reunites with Kira (from Gathering Blue).

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1-4, Chapters 5-8, Chapters 9-12, Chapters 13-17, Chapters 18-21

Explore other lists of The Giver Quartet here.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. impatient
    restless or short-tempered under delay or opposition
    Don’t be so impatient, Matty. You always want to rush things, and there’s no need.
  2. illusion
    an erroneous mental representation
    He didn’t know what the blind man meant. Was he saying that fear was an illusion? Or that Forest was?
  3. flaw
    defect or weakness in a person's character
    But here in Village, marks and failings were not considered flaws at all.
  4. mentor
    a wise and trusted guide and advisor
    The schoolteacher, though his true name was Mentor, was sometimes affectionately called “Rosy” by the children because of the crimson birthmark that spread across his face.
  5. sacrifice
    endure the loss of
    Sometimes he wondered what they had sacrificed for the Gaming Machine, but one never asked.
  6. swift
    moving very fast
    He was swift and quiet in the woods, and he could feel the direction of things without landmarks, in the same way that he could feel weather and was able to predict rain long before the clouds came or there was a shift in wind.
  7. venture
    proceed somewhere despite the risk of possible dangers
    Others from Village rarely ventured into Forest. It was dangerous for them.
  8. entangle
    cause to twist together or be caught in a snarled mass
    Sometimes Forest closed in and entangled people who had tried to travel beyond. There had been terrible deaths, with bodies brought out strangled by vines or branches that had reached out malevolently around the throats and limbs of those who decided to leave Village.
  9. benign
    pleasant and beneficial in nature or influence
    Somehow, too, it knew that Matty’s travels were benign and necessary. The vines had never reached out for him. The trees seemed, sometimes, almost to part and usher him through.
  10. errand
    a short trip taken in the performance of a necessary task
    They trusted him to know the paths, to be safe on them, and to do the errands that required traveling through the thick woods with its complicated, mazelike turnings. He carried messages for them.
  11. privacy
    the quality of being secluded from the presence of others
    He needed privacy for this thing he was discovering about himself: a place to test it in secret, to weigh his own fear for what it meant.
  12. ordinary
    not exceptional in any way
    His life would be easier, Matty knew, if the little frog were unmarked and ordinary.
  13. collective
    done by or characteristic of individuals acting together
    Matty had arrived at the homeplace the night before to find the blind man preparing for bed and listening attentively to the low collective moan, clearly a large number of people grieving.
  14. warning
    a message informing of danger
    He had come back safely, but he had had a small Warning on his return: a sudden painful puncture from what had seemed a tiny twig.
  15. designate
    assign a name or title to
    He couldn’t see it, of course, though later he said he had felt it come forward, had perceived it with the kind of knowledge that had made the people designate Seer as his true name.
  16. jealous
    painfully desirous of another's advantages
    The Gaming Machine again. Ramon mentioned it so often. Maybe Gloater would be his true name, Matty thought. He had already decided on Boaster, but now, in his mind, he decided Gloater was more appropriate. Or Bragger. He was tired of hearing about the Gaming Machine. And a little jealous, too.
  17. populace
    people in general considered as a whole
    The blind man, Seer, made his way through the lanes of Village, checking on the populace, assessing the well-being of each individual.
  18. amiss
    in an improper or mistaken manner
    If anything was amiss, he would do his best to make it right.
  19. pace
    the rate of moving (especially walking or running)
    From a window, the tall young man known as Leader looked down and watched the slow and cheerful pace of Village, of the people he loved, who had chosen him to rule and guard them.
  20. relic
    something of sentimental value
    There were many relics of arrival in the Museum, because each person who had not been born in Village had his own story of coming there.
  21. represent
    serve as a means of expressing something
    But somehow the small red-painted sled had become a symbol of courage and hope. Leader was young but he represented those things.
  22. shroud
    cover as if with a burial garment
    Finally he looked toward the border of Village, to the place where the path entered Forest and became shrouded in shadows.
  23. tapestry
    a wall hanging of heavy fabric with pictorial designs
    Matty stood often before it, looking carefully at the intricate embroidered tapestry depicting a large thick forest separating two small villages far from each other. It was the geography of his own life, and that of the blind man, for they had both moved from that place to this other, with great difficulty.
  24. convenient
    suited to your comfort or purpose or needs
    “The Gaming Machine could stand right there,” he decided. “It would be very convenient. Extremely convenient,” he added, aware that the blind man liked it when he exercised his vocabulary.
  25. exchange
    the act of changing one thing for another thing
    “And so we would give up—or maybe even trade away—reading, and music, in exchange for the extreme excitement of pulling a handle and watching sour balls spit forth from a mechanical device?” he asked.
  26. propose
    present for consideration, examination, or criticism
    There were no secrets in Village. It was one of the rules that Leader had proposed, and all of the people had voted in favor of it.
  27. participate
    be involved in
    He believed in Leader, and in Leader’s insistence that all of Village’s citizens, even the children, read, learn, participate, and care for one another.
  28. deceitful
    marked by deliberate deceptiveness
    But sometimes he slipped back into the habits of his earlier life, when he had been a sly and deceitful boy in order to survive.
  29. decent
    socially or conventionally correct; refined or virtuous
    “Now you are relearning. You are learning honesty. I’m sorry to punish you, Matty, but Village is a population of honest and decent people, and I want you to be one of us.”
  30. bait
    something used to lure fish or other animals
    “Fish aren’t ever easy. You have to use just the right bait, and know the right place to go, and then you have to pull the line up at just the right moment, because if you don’t, the fish can wiggle right off your hook, and not everybody is good at it, and ...”
  31. snub
    refuse to acknowledge
    Although he hadn’t been sent to it in almost two years, Matty especially liked trips that took him back to his former home, where he could greet his boyhood pals with a somewhat superior smile, and snub those who had been cruel to him in the past.
  32. harsh
    unkind or cruel or uncivil
    The community where he had lived was greatly changed and seemed foreign, though less harsh than he remembered.
  33. petition
    a formal request that something be submitted to an authority
    There had been a petition—signed by a substantial number of people—to close Village to outsiders.
  34. dwindle
    become smaller or lose substance
    “It’s not the fish or crops,” he said. “They’ll use that, of course. They argued dwindling food supply last time. It’s ...”
  35. border
    the boundary line or area immediately inside the boundary
    “Why would he want to close the border?”
Created on Tue Jun 20 13:07:04 EDT 2017 (updated Tue May 31 12:46:16 EDT 2022)

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