They live this way because they are doing the right thing for the sake of everyone else. They have noble architecture, poignant music and profound sciences. The child may have been locked up in the basement but for some reason, this scenario provides the balance. These are the people who know that no one in Omelas is free. Like Jonas in “The Giver”, these are the people who feel emotional depth.
They can no longer live in a society that is so idealistic from the outside while a child suffers in the basement, hidden from public view. Perhaps, these are the people who sympathized with the child. Toward the end of the story, there are people who walked away from Omelas. This is a way for them to continue living the life they know. They know that this is the balance that must be maintained of Omelas. There are others who look with disdain and simply walk away. There are some people who look at the child in the basement walk away feeling all sorts of emotions – anguish, despair, sympathy, anger. When the children of Omelas can comprehend the wretched one’s state of life, the situation is explained to them.
In a nutshell, no one will ever feel pain, as long as the child remains in the basement. It turns out that the child’s lifestyle eliminates the anguish of everyone. It made me ask why the people of Omelas did not care. I got goose bumps when I read the paragraph describing how the child lived. He or she sits in excrement and dines on corn and grease. One child in the basement is locked up, deformed, alone, ignored, unheard. The society in Omelas remains in harmony at a price. In “The Giver,” the main character Jonas learns that there is emotional depth in the world out there while in Omelas, there are some people who walk away because they can no longer stand the suffering one child had to go through in order for the rest of society to be in utopia. I mentioned “The Giver” because like “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, there are characters in the story who find the lifestyle in their world superficial and shallow. When I was reading the first pages of the story, I felt like I was reading a fairy tale because everybody was blissfully happy. Both Omelas and the utopian society in “The Giver” do not know pain, suffering or strife.
There is no war, no hate, no murders, no corruption. Laguin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is similar to Lois Lowry’s “The Giver.” Both are set in an ideal world.
0 kommentar(er)
