Wednesday, September 25, 2013

What are three interesting topics that I could discuss from the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"?

Here are other topics for consideration:


As mentioned previously the pragmatism of William James is intrinsic to an examination of this story.  For, LeGuin wrote "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" as a response to this theory that states that a person's thoughts should guide his or her actions, and that truth is a consequence of a person's belief. (This almost sounds like Hamlet's remark:  Nothing is neither good, nor bad; only thinking makes it so.)  Is, then, the belief that the good of the many is worth the sacrifice of one?  That is, does pragmatism hold here? Or does moral responsibility supersede this belief?


Another topic concerns the definition of happiness.  While there is no pain, no sickness, no sorrow in Omelas, there does not appear to be real joy, even though the intrusive narrator declares "they were happy." Yet, LeGuin writes that the people no longer have the need of smiling: "all smiles had become archaic."  In what appears to be a utopia, there is still some doubt, and LeGuin's narrator asks, "Do you believe?  Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy?"  Some have not.  They are the ones who walk away, who know of the child and do not forget.  They



seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.



Here the question of moral responsibility to oneself emerges.  Can there be happiness without sorrow?


Finally, a third topic concerns the morally ambiguous last line quoted above.  If the ones who walk from Omelas [meaning "Peace, alas"] do so because they cannot be happy at someone else's expense, how is it that they can leave the child without trying to help him/her?

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