a foot-operated lever used to control certain mechanisms, as automobiles, or to play or modify the sounds of certain musical instruments, as pianos, organs, or harps. 2. a leverlike part worked by the foot to supply power in various mechanisms, as the bicycle. 3. Music.
The Sled. The sled, the first memory Jonas receives from the Giver, symbolizes the journey Jonas takes during his training and the discoveries he makes. It is red, a color that symbolizes the new, vital world of feelings and ideas that Jonas discovers.
Pleasure and pain are inevitably related on the sled, just as they are in the memories. When, at the end of the novel, Jonas finds a real sled, it symbolizes his entry into a world where color, sensation, and emotion exist in reality, not just in memory.