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We're not alone
Jul. 29th, 2007 10:13 amI saw someone else say this on a totally different place, so now I feel brave enough to say it...
Though I was really touched by "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" when I was a kid, I dislike the story now.
Ursula LeGuin was pretty much one of my favorite authors in middle school. I read the Earthsea books over and over, read the Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness (both of which go down a little oddly when you're a middle schooler, but hey, so does Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand, so *shrug*), and just generally tore through all I could find of hers, though I never did make it all the way through Always Coming Home. (And to this day, I never have.)
But the older I get, the more I find that the moral questions at the heart of some of her stories doesn't speak to the adult I've become. Which is odd, because surely my interactions with those stories are part of the process by which I became this adult.
Last week I was thinking of various ways that the moral question "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is centered on could be revised. For one thing, I don't think that contemplating the suffering of a sacrifice would actually move lots of average people to being selfless and good, when they are the ones who instituted the sacrifice. And wouldn't the child age and become an unappealing old man/woman, rather than a big-eyed child? How do the parents whose child is sacrificed feel, and why do none of them move to violent rebellion that must be quelled when it is their child that is chosen to sit in the dark? And it doesn't feel like a fair moral question to ask of a society, since more often the pleasure and contentment of one many is founded on the relative deprivation and exploitation of a different many. So the moral question is not "are you willing to directly confront the profound exploitation of one person" but "are you willing to force yourself to be aware of, and act to change, the relative exploitation of many people." Then there's the whole issue of asking what kind of person you are who is willing to allow the society to exist that is based on torturing a child. They walk away. Are they weighing the moral issue of whether they are allowed to destroy this idealistic ribbon-plaiting horse-racing society, and deciding that this would be a crueler act than keeping that child in the dark room? Because that's an awfully cold calculation to make. The story doesn't really say. It just says that they leave.
On the other hand, the story works really well as a sort of parable or moral dream. That's certainly the way I read it as a kid when I liked it so much. As a dream, a series of images with their own internal logic, the story compels me. Here are the happy people in the sunlight. Here is the sad child in the dark. Here is the choice - trap yourself in this dark cycle in order to reap certain rewards, or walk away into an uncertain world.
As someone just entering adulthood, I now crave stories that are about the aftermath of choices, the secondary and tertiary decisions that are forced into your life as the result of a primary decision. One of the short stories that I still like by Ursula LeGuin is, I think, in the same book of stories. It's the one about the old woozled lady, after the revolution. It's set in the same world as The Dispossessed, I think. Can't recall the title.
Though I was really touched by "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" when I was a kid, I dislike the story now.
Ursula LeGuin was pretty much one of my favorite authors in middle school. I read the Earthsea books over and over, read the Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness (both of which go down a little oddly when you're a middle schooler, but hey, so does Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand, so *shrug*), and just generally tore through all I could find of hers, though I never did make it all the way through Always Coming Home. (And to this day, I never have.)
But the older I get, the more I find that the moral questions at the heart of some of her stories doesn't speak to the adult I've become. Which is odd, because surely my interactions with those stories are part of the process by which I became this adult.
Last week I was thinking of various ways that the moral question "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is centered on could be revised. For one thing, I don't think that contemplating the suffering of a sacrifice would actually move lots of average people to being selfless and good, when they are the ones who instituted the sacrifice. And wouldn't the child age and become an unappealing old man/woman, rather than a big-eyed child? How do the parents whose child is sacrificed feel, and why do none of them move to violent rebellion that must be quelled when it is their child that is chosen to sit in the dark? And it doesn't feel like a fair moral question to ask of a society, since more often the pleasure and contentment of one many is founded on the relative deprivation and exploitation of a different many. So the moral question is not "are you willing to directly confront the profound exploitation of one person" but "are you willing to force yourself to be aware of, and act to change, the relative exploitation of many people." Then there's the whole issue of asking what kind of person you are who is willing to allow the society to exist that is based on torturing a child. They walk away. Are they weighing the moral issue of whether they are allowed to destroy this idealistic ribbon-plaiting horse-racing society, and deciding that this would be a crueler act than keeping that child in the dark room? Because that's an awfully cold calculation to make. The story doesn't really say. It just says that they leave.
On the other hand, the story works really well as a sort of parable or moral dream. That's certainly the way I read it as a kid when I liked it so much. As a dream, a series of images with their own internal logic, the story compels me. Here are the happy people in the sunlight. Here is the sad child in the dark. Here is the choice - trap yourself in this dark cycle in order to reap certain rewards, or walk away into an uncertain world.
As someone just entering adulthood, I now crave stories that are about the aftermath of choices, the secondary and tertiary decisions that are forced into your life as the result of a primary decision. One of the short stories that I still like by Ursula LeGuin is, I think, in the same book of stories. It's the one about the old woozled lady, after the revolution. It's set in the same world as The Dispossessed, I think. Can't recall the title.
