Chief Elder

Chief Elder
Gender	Female
Hair	Gray
Assigned occupation	Chief Elder
Allies	Committee of Elders
Enemies	Jonas, Gabriel, The Giver (In the Film Adaption)
Appearances	The Giver, The Giver (film)
Portrayed by	Meryl Streep

The Chief Elder is the leader of the community who is newly elected every ten years. At the December Ceremony, the Chief Elder makes speeches and gives out Assignments to the Elevens. In Jonas's time, the Chief Elder is a woman.

History

The Giver

She appears during the Ceremony, other than that she does not make any other major appearances.

Movie Portrayal

In the film adaptation of "The Giver," she is played by Meryl Streep. She is also at her most evil in this role (Unlike in the book, where she is very kind) trying to contain her authoritarian community as a solution to suffering and great pain. She appears more sinister and will do whatever it takes, in her eyes, to make the community better. In the movie, she is in charge of all communities.

She maintains the "Sameness" by power and control, usually by killing babies of slower development than other babies, the elderly, and those citizens that do not comply with the standards and/or following the rules of Sameness. However, instead of "execution", she creates a misleading "release to Elsewhere". The citizens there think of "releasing" as a good thing, even though there is that "Elsewhere", which is ambiguous.

She also tends to use a large amount of double speak, ambiguous words that twist the true meaning of what a word is meaning, rather much like a euphemism although a lot stronger. An example of this includes "release to Elsewhere".

After Jonas releases the memories at the end of the movie, she appears to be horrified by what she has done. There is also hints of some kind of deeper relationship between her and the Giver though the exact nature of it is unknown.