In the climax of the novel, the Giver and Jonas formulate a plan to have Jonas escape, thereby flooding everyone in the community with memories; it is also decided that the Giver would stay behind to help the people of the community process their new feel

Jonas' new knowlege of what the release actually is forms the catalyst for a plan to return memory and life to the community, through twin paths that will respectively be taken by Jonas and The Giver. In order to release memories into the community and give the citizens a chance to mature in the same way that Jonas has matured over the past year, Jonas will leave the community forever. This is the move toward Elsewhere that he had thought release involved in the first place. The Giver, for his part, plays a pivotal role in this plan by choosing to stay and act as The Giver for the whole community rather than only for Jonas. In this way, The Giver will atone for his past mistakes and help the community learn rather than allowing it to return to the old ways. Thus far, everyone has referred to Rosemary as the failure of ten years ago, but in one sense, The Giver is the own who failed, missing his chance to help the community learn from the experience because The Giver at the time was lost in his own grief.