Dear Martha:
Thanks a million for your reponse. I am new at this type of reading. With
more practice, soon--I hope--I will be able to pay back the "favor."
Madalyn
At 02:27 PM 5/6/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Le Guin's story stems (she says) from Henry(?) James --
>a philosophical question: could one be happy in a world
>that provided every perfection one could wish IF it
>depended on one person living in absolute misery.
>
>That's a child in the basement -- girl or boy makes no
>difference. The difference Le Guin posits is important:
>everyone in Omelas KNOWS about the child. (We create a
>culture with lots and lots of people living in misery,
>but we are very very careful not to 'see' them.)
>
>In Omelas, everything is perfect (even the narrative voice
>that reminds us how perfect it is -- you want orgies? OK,
>you can have orgies, but they'll be nice ones). And, sometimes,
>someone walks away. They don't know what they're walking TO,
>but they know very well what they're walking away FROM.
>
>I don't think it resembles Jackson's Lottery all that much.
>No one questions the lottery except the woman who gets
>stoned. Even her kids cooperate. (And we see that she's a
>nice average housewife type who cleaned up the kitchen before
>she came to her death.) And no one knows why they have the
>lottery; it's a custom, that's all, and there's a saying that
>if they don't have it they won't have a good year. That kind
>of residual superstition does occur, in many forms, but it's
>usually subconscious. Le Guin does not allow that comfortable
>out.
>
>
>Martha Bartter
>Truman State University
>
>
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