Biographical criticism is the study of an author's biography or life to find a relationship between their life and their work. This method helps researchers understand why an author writes what they write. An author's life events can cause them to write what they write and incorporate events from their lives in their writing. Happy memories, hopes and dreams they once or still have, or even sad events can affect their writing tremendously. This critical theory can be studied through Lois Lowry's novel "The Giver". As we look at Lowry's life we can see she incorporates life events and her dreams into the characters and events in the novel. .
In her late 60's Lowry had both parents in nursing homes. She would frequently visit Boston to visit them. Her mother was blind and frail but was very healthy and "[Her] father was healthier, physically, but his memory was going" (Lowry). Her parent's health was a major influence when Lowry wrote "The Giver". Her father's memory loss had a giant influence on the whole concept of the giver keeping all the memories. It is an illusion of her father's memories being taken away like how the giver holds them for the community. "My job is to transmit to you all the memories I have within me. Memories of the past" (Lowry 77). The giver in the novel holds all the memories from the past so that the rest of the community doesn't have them. He keeps all the bad memories and the good. This is a reflection of Lowry's father who does not have his memory. Lowry also incorporates her mother and her dreams for her. The "death of [her mother's] first child, [her sister] Helen" (Lowry) made her dream for her mother to forget about that horrible memory. She thought about the power of manipulating memories and being able to "leave [her] mother with all those happy memories of puppies and picnics and take away the sad memory of the day her daughter died" (Lowry).