Mikael's Blog # 4

Group 1: Question 4
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", the citizens of the town are willing to deny the happiness of one of their citizens for the greater good.  The child who is constantly kept in the dark is the perfect symbol of the Proletariat: a lower-class citizen who is kept in the dark and made to suffer so the other townsfolk (Bourgeoisie) can stay happy.  This child represents the downtrodden worker who works constantly in misery and filth to line the pockets of the upper-class.  Every generation is eventually shown this child, a symbol of the upper-class being indoctrinated into the world he or she is expected to embrace.  Occasionally, a citizen can't handle the plight of another human being, and leaves Omelas.  This blatant denial of the accepted ideology symbolizes the necessary revolution and revolt that inevitably goes hand in hand with a societal caste system.  Whether it's somebody in the upper or lower class, the unacceptable system is denied.  While it may take one denial or one hundred, the revolt eventually leads to revolution and change.  In this way, Omelas is doomed from the beginning.

Group 2: Question 6
In both "Omelas" and "The Lottery" we're faced with the hypothetical existence of a Utopian society.  It is unfortunate that the presence of their respective dark quality shatters the very ethos of it.  It is both the slow sacrifice of the child in Omelas and the uniformed yearly murder of a citizen of New Hope that deny each society from the Utopian ideal.  While the Vulcan belief of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" may seem acceptable on the surface, it is  an ideology that would inevitably fall apart.  No matter how deep the belief is indoctrinated into the general public, it goes against the very nature of humanity; there will always be people who can't cope with the status quo, represented in the stories by both the father who left New Hope and the ones who leave Omelas.