Le Guin (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas) post

This story was confusing and I don’t understand what was going on. The author in all these Utopia stories I have read so far are good with describing one thing to another thing so is not clearly comprehend well unless you analyze what the hints in the story are. At the beginning of this story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. I had no idea what the author was describing. The hint using the word summer told me that it was summer time and there was a festival going on. The author talked about what the town was like what telling us “In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved.” In the beginning the author also try to describe what the people were like but not much was giving. The city of Omelas was surrounded by several mountains because the text said Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. Omelas seem to be a nice place of happiness when describing the summer and how the people were happy but then when I read there was a kid in a room being abused I did not know what to think because how can those people be happy and some of the people were kicking the child in the dark room. My mind changed from a happy setting to a sad emotion state thinking about how bad the child was treated in the dark. I find there was a lot of words I did not know the definitions to and I find it a problem because I constantly was looking for the meaning. There was some point in the story where the author asked questions about the joy of the people in Omelas. I was lost on whether the people was happy or unhappy. In the story I got the full idea that this story was about a horse race. I got that idea when i read the part of the story with these words “As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line. The settings change all the time so I could never know what I should set my mind on. There is a part in the story where they describe a skinny child in a dark room being abussed by visitors kicking him/her. The child suppose to be ten years in age and looks like 7 years old because of malnutrition. The story says that mostly kids around 12 come to see the child in that room. To me I feel that the child being in that room let others be happy for not being in that situation. Them not being in that room themselves makes them happy but sad to see how terrible the child suffers. I don’t know why this is a part of their society and is clearly a part of their culture because the adults would not let their children see the child in that condition for fun.

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