In Le Guin’s, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, I was surprised and liked how the author chose to start off by describing the setting of the story. Not only did it provide a great imagery of the introduction, but it also gives us a basis of the feeling of the story. It gives the reader a sense that the setting of the story is quite peaceful and lively and happy with the Festival going on and with children casually playing around. The narrator of the story is so happy and joyful, he doesn’t even know how to describe his own townspeople or fellow citizens(third to last line of first page). As I read into the second page of the story, its tone sounds completely different from the start and it surprises me. I’m not sure if it was the authors intention on throwing us off by starting off with this happy and joyful place but then showing off the dark side of these people. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.” This line is where it starts to confuse me and shocks me  on how the people of this town really are. I think one of the ideas that this story is trying to express is the idea of an utopia or their definition of a utopia. The author writes about how there are no specific rules, no stock exchange, advertisement, secret police and etc. Le Guin also adds to this idea of a peaceful utopia is that they have no use of violence. no swords, no slaves, and not barbarians. Although the narrator seems to be a spectator and not a citizen of this society, the ideas of this society seem to be obvious and well known.

Like in Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, his other story “The Day Before the Revolution” start off similar by talking about the setting and giving us a brief imagery of the scene. In the third page of the story, I got confused if there was a transition from the scene in the beginning to the third page, and i thought it was a flashback at first. The first sentence from the third paragraph really intrigued me, “The Toes, compressed by a liofetime of cheap shoes, were almost square where they touched each other, and bulged out above in corns; the nails were discolored and shapeless.” This really grabs my attention because in one sentence, the author describes the character in many ways. It tells us that the main character has gone through tough times and perhaps living a life of poverty to some extent. The author also provides us with a lot of imagery of the main character. The character describes herself as disgusting, sad and depressing and this really gives us the feeling that the character is disorganized and not confident with herself. I liked this because it got me brainstorming on how the actual plot will go. The language and style of writing in this story was a lot harder than in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.”