Vague Ending to The Giver

Today the family finally completed reading the book The Giver. However not everybody shared the same understanding of what happend in the end. Here are some facts. The boy was starving. His body was going numb due to the cold. The mountain he needed to climb was treacherously steep. And he stumbled. He had lost many of his memories.

Little Kat and I were certain that this boy died. There were too many suspicious circumstances for a boy who had come to the end of his journey. It felt more like he died dreaming of reaching his final destination. The top answer on Yahoo agreed with Little Kat and I. This boy died.

Momoko and then Kit Kat believed the boy lived on. They were not sure of the details. But they assumed there were good things in his future. Strangely enough, the author agrees with Momoko and Kit Kat. The author states in an interview that this is an optomistic ending.

Others chime in that the boy reappears in the second and third books of the trilogy. That, combined with the author's comments, made me change my mind about the ending. I still think the author did not do a good job in explaining what happened. Many say that she left the ending intentionally vague so the reader could determine what the like.