After reading “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin I spent a lot of time thinking about how society functions and Le Guins idea of a utopian society.  The author viewed a utopian society as one that is drug free, government free, law free and everyone is happy. Guin mentions often in his view of a utopian society where everyone is nude. I believe he used this as a symbol of being completely free of any government or laws. I imagined the society to visually be a futuristic medieval times type of design where there is no technology but the buildings themselves are futuristic in today’s standards.  However, in one of these buildings the author describes a child. This child is described to be all dirty and bruised from sitting in his or her own feces.  The child is nude like everyone else but they are very dirty and not visually appealing like everyone else.  In the story it is said that the child was neglected growing up and therefore he turned out like this.  I believe that this symbolizes what a bad environment can lead to in today’s world.  If a kid today is brought up in a broken family that is addicted to all of life’s vices, then they will turn up like that and be the very opposite of a utopian society. At the end the author describes people leaving the city of Omelas and not returning. I believe that this symbolizes that even though society is perfect, people still won’t like it and therefore you cannot satisfy everyone.  Maybe the child mentioned is a result of what you return as when you leave Omelas. I also read another piece that is in relation to “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and it was entitled “The Day before Revolution” which was also written by the same author. In the prelude for the reading, the author immediately mentions that this piece was about someone who left Omelas. In my opinion this person is lead to be the protagonist who doesn’t have a name. The setting of the story is in the middle of a rebellion which in my opinion could potentially be the climax so to speak in a road to get to the people’s eyes of a utopia. The protagonist lost her husband Taviri to this rebellion. The protagonist then grows old and is unable to take care of herself and I feel that she sort of lost this will power when her husband died. The protagonist maybe believes that her own utopia would have to include her husband and she cannot have one without him. This story tended to jump all over the place and include a lot of detail that did not provide any detail to the story. You really have to dig deep to see how this even can be viewed as a story for utopian societies. Also the author doesn’t mention Omelas at all besides the prelude.

 Reading Ursula Le Guin’s stories I had a very clear picture of what was going on. Whatever the setting was I can imagine it as if I was remembering a scene from a movie. Comparing her stories “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and “The Day Before the Revolution” I realize how different they are. I enjoyed more “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” it had a very pleasant setting, with every one being happy and living to enjoy life. Le Guin introduces the story with the Festival of Summer which I pictured as a Southern Party from the 1850’s. In the eyes of the people it was perfect, they found a way to erase a horrible secret and bury it in order to live a happily ever after life. Reading the beginning of the story and hearing about this wonderful place I began to imagine what would be like living there and how it would be nice to live there, but when the part of the little boy came my mood about this perfect life changed completely. I started feeling pity and anger, I even started feeling very protective of this imaginative innocent child. I could not imagine how the people in this story could go and see him like it was part of a ritual into adulthood and go on with their happy without doing anything. In my opinion if someone can live with that they don’t deserve to be happy. and I believe that I were in this story I would be one of the people who leave the town and live a hard life then to live on a good one at the cost of someone’s a child’s suffering.

 “The Day Before the Revolution” didn’t capture my interest as much. Although I also was able to easily picture the scenes in my head I wasn’t able to obtain (I guess you can say) the emotional connection that I had with the previous story. This had more of a dystopian setting, with the citizens wanting to revolt again their higher authority, it seemed like a place of chaos. Where the law enforcement was taking advantage of their power and people were fighting back. Abuse and violence everywhere. I think it was a little too out of control, so much that the main character, Laia believed that the new generation was fighting for a reason that was not originally planned for the revolution. After her husband died, she lost interest in fighting for the cause and she became nothing more than a piece in a historical museum until she had enough and gave in into “falling.” They were very interesting stories, both with an unexpected twist and I have a good feeling that the other stories by Ursula Le Guin were just as interesting and captivating as “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and “The Day Before the Revolution.”

After reading The Day Before the Revolution for the first time my mind was all over the place. I had no idea of what to make of this story. It took me awhile to finish this reading because I wasn’t focusing on it. I felt it was way too long and just flat out confusing especially all the different names. While reading I caught myself just looking at the words and not grasping/ paying attention to them and I was not understanding what I was reading.  I then read this story over again and got somewhat of a better understanding. I felt the imagery Le Guin used was great. From the details in the story I was able to picture the different peoples appearances  ex : “(an old woman with grey hair . . . in a slum, muttering to herself)” Le Guin page 12.  I imagined an old lady sitting on a dirty city street. I also imagined a very gloomy setting wherever the old lady went almost like a dark cloud on top of her. I think that the old lady wanted to preserve the area around her in which she was so used to and to keep everything the same as it always was even as she is getting older and older and all she is doing is just reminiscing on the past when she was younger and how everything used to be. I still didn’t fully understand the whole meaning this story is trying to give off but I think it can be interpreted in different ways. I feel that adding other names and places confused me and it was hard to try and change back and forth on who Le Guin was writing about. I think the main focus of this story should have been only about the old lady’s life and not other people because I was at times unsure with who is who. One part of the story I felt was interesting was the quotation “(courage – what was courage? . . . not fearing, some said. Fearing yet going on)” Le Guin page 6. This part really made me think about how there are many different meanings of words and its just based on how you interpret it.  I would think that this story is a utopia because of how the old lady lived and wanted everything to be the way it was for example: being with her husband. I think that shows this story is a utopia because that was her perfect world, her husband being alive.

From reading The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas I can say that Le Guin is good at using adjectives and imagery to enable the reader to imagine or put themselves in that setting. This story also confused me. Le Guin didnt actually give any specific names of people, but just kept repeating “they”,  “he”, “the child” . I wanted to try and place a character in the situation because I was able to clearly picture where and how this story was taking place. On the first page Le Guin described the Festival of Summer which led me to believe it was a happy place where everyone of Omelas came together and celebrated. After continuing reading Le Guin writes about the child who is locked in the basement. I didnt like this at all because the child was being referred to as “it” and because that Le Guin really enables the reader to picture how everything looks really made me feel bad for the child and the harsh living conditions. I felt this was weird because to what I thought, the first page was described as a happy place with “a cheerful faint sweetness of the air”. I think that this story was an example of a dystopia because although in the beginning of the story it was described as what I thought was good environment, Le Guin added the element of the child locked in the basement with a rusty bucket and dirty floors. Le Guin writes that perhaps the child was born defective with feelings of fear and neglect. I think that can maybe be a dystopia because in the real world its okay if a person may have some type of defect or disability and they are still equal to any other person. But, in Omelas where I interpreted as a “perfect sounding” world the child added almost a feeling of negativity. (which in my opinion is wrong) The element of the child in this story really made me dislike it.

Ursula Le Guin is VERY good at describing the setting to the reading in both short stories “The Day Before The Revolution” and “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. The clearly describes every detail of the character’s surroundings and ambience noise in the background. I was able to quickly depict how the character or object looks like. By using a huge array of descriptive words i was immersed into the story and almost feel as if I was  in the room myself. As seen in “The Day Before The Revolution” a description was given to every character and object that the main character interacted with. I felt like I was this elderly woman and Le Guin beautifully narrates it in a third person view , as if you were behind Laia the whole time.With the use of flash backs to past events I was able to create a relationship with Laia , as if I knew her all along. Le Guin , the author,  made you relive Laia’s past and gave me a decent understanding of what she has been through to have reached where she was now. The author described characters who I thought was a bit pointless but none the less kept adding more information about Laia and her being old enough to not be able to fully take care of herself.She musters the strength to walk around the streets only to become ill and weak.I believe this reminded her how it was when she was young and living in poverty.I did not understand this part at all and was quite lost about its significance. I was able to sum up the fact that she missed her husband dearly , Taviri , and found herself to be an annoyance to others and I believe she does pass away at the end of story as she walks up the stairs. I wasn’t able to comprehend the link between this story and to a utopia.

“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” had a very colorful and happy setting , almost as if it was impossible or unattainable. There seemed to be no sadness but only room for what made sense to have. The people of Omelas did not have the need for fancy necessities such as fancy technology but only need the essentials ( such as a train station). Every one was happy and dancing and celebrating , I want to say they were celebrating an anniversary of peace and prosperity. But they had something that reminded them that its not always been a happy and perfect world. They held a young child in a closet to remind themselves how the world can be . I feel like they used the boy as a way to keep them clear minded and to continue doing good in the world unless they want to end up like this defective and unusable person , who had nothing to contribute to this perfect city. Other had ideas that maybe if they were able to help the young child that they could help others as well and make the world a better place.

The first page of  “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” had very vivid imagery, almost as if one was there, almost too good to be true. Once I finished reading the first page I didn’t see how the title related with the story, if I were the Le Guin I would have named the story something else, a more obvious title. As I continued on reading, the second page to me felt as though I was reading nothing. After reading one line I felt as though the next contradicted the first, a lot of questions were being asked but none answered by the narrator or characters in the story. “Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however—that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.—they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinda of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for a common cold” (pg2). This part to me felt as though it went against all the imagery in the first page, I think because we today take these things for granted. The first page has such rich detail and this scene is portrayed as though the people of this town think it’s the best day to look forward to in their lives. Everything in the city seems so peaceful, until they get to the basement and start talking about the child who’s locked inside. Now I must admit, the imagery was very peaceful and relaxing to read but I wasn’t into the story until this part. The town seemed to not have anything wrong with it but in fact according to them it did, this problem was the child, whom they thought might have been born defective. Sadly, in today’s world there are still people who would prefer to have people with certain defects locked away somewhere. Although, I think there is nothing wrong with being different at all, intentionally or not. Mary Temple Gradin, http://www.templegrandin.com born autistic but yet she contributed a great insight to animal science and she was also an author, even though many people thought she was not capable of doing anything remotely to this. As they described how people in the city came to this basement to see the child the question that comes to my mind is “ If everyone is so interested in seeing the child, why not let the child live amongst those same people? What is the purpose of hiding the child that everyone wants to see?” The fact that people are so moved by the “imprisonment” of the child to the point where some people even leave the city. “Delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed,”(pg6) if the child were to be let out, why this would be I’m not too sure.

I liked the “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” more then “The Day Before the Revolution” only because I felt this story was all over the place. I also felt as though the story was way too long and pointless. I understood she was in a home and that she is an “important” figure of a movement, but she (the old lady) refers to a lot of people from her past some who were in prison but now dead.  I really didn’t understand why she referred to these people, or what was the significance in the character Noi.  When she was in the bathroom before Noi arrived she was worried about her hair and upset about the stain on her shirt, the way Noi was described made it seem as though she was some what attracted to Noi.  What I got out of the story was that her and her husband were activist in a movement, her husband died and all she had was a folder, Noi helped her write response to people who wrote her letters, she made a trip to see the outside world, the one she considered herself a part of. When she went outside she saw all these different things, feeling dizzy someone who lived in her house helped her back, for her to then find out once getting there that there was going to be a march the very next day, when everyone asked her for advice she said she wouldn’t be here, im guessing she knew her time was coming. Im assuming she dies because of the way the story ended. She was old and fragile, she felt very tired, very weak, once the march for the revolution came, I take it as though now she can finally get real rest. Everything that made her tired, everything she worked for was now being accomplished and carried on by the younger folks to whom she spoke and wrote to. After reading this I think I’m missing the bigger picture or the actual reason/purpose as to why the story was written.