1.In this story, the idea of ultimate Freedom is the freedom to opt out of the city, where one cannot question why a solitary child is consigned to misery in a basement cell, denying it basic human rights, seemingly for the greater good of the society. In other words, those who enjoy the many positive aspects of the society in the city of Omelas do not have the choice of questioning this single act of barbarity; neither does the child have any choice but to endure the confinement in pitiable conditions. Those who cannot put up with this, those who do not have either the freedom, or choice, to question it, exercise their choice of leaving the city. The author seems to endorse this freedom as the supreme one, much above the freedom for free sexual expression and general merriment that have been celebrated in the city.
2. Steven Lukes says that there are three dimensions of power. The first is the issue method in which the one who wins an argument has the power. The second is setting the agenda. The one who decides what is to be argued about, or set the agenda. The third is, manipulation of the views of others.(Cook) In this story, no one can question why the child has been detained in the cell in the basement. Thus the first dimension, that of questioning the barbarity or arguing in favour of the child, is obviated. The second and third dimensions are in operation here as people can come and visit the child and commiserate with it, but they are not allowed to question the status quo (a modified second dimension); the notion of accepting the child’s fate as something necessary for the greater good gets wide currency (third dimension).
3. We, most of us, are well-meaning citizens who hate to see others’ suffering. But knowingly or unknowingly, our acquiescence or quiet acceptance of national policies at various levels that go against the interests of the larger humanity within the country and around the world, indirectly causes the less privileged to plunge deeper into misery. According to National Center for Children in Poverty, nearly 15 million children in the US live in poverty.(Avila). Many more children are tortured, their rights denied around the world. When such is the case, we feel ourselves to be righteous if we declare that we hate war and violence, we do not have priests-run religions, or that we are free to the express our sexualitt, just like the society of Omelas is portrayed in the story. As pragmatists, we feel that though it is bad that millions of children in our country and around the world are denied justice, there is nothing we can do about it; in our smugness, deciding that there can be such suffering for the greater good, we are as callous as the general public of Omelas.
4. Le Guin is same as Dostoevsky in this story in so far as she uses the of the allegory of a lone, tortured child, almost similarly as Dostoevsky does, in his novel Brothers Karamazov, through the anecdote of a girl-child being shut up in a toilet by her own mother for bed-wetting; the child prays to God to protect her. One of the differences is that in Le Guin’s story, the child does not call on God, or exhibit any sign of a religious upbringing, but promises those who visit it, that it will behave if it is let out.
5. I do not agree with Frederic Jameson. The story has relevance as it leads us to introspection about out national policies. Jameson, a Marxist political theorist, maybe piqued about the anarchist elements in the story like the absence of a central ruling authority and its armed forces.
6. The story begins and progresses in a utopian vein. But soon we discover the misery of the child locked up in the basement cell, and dystopia sets in. Thus we find that Omelas is not an ideal society after all. Therefore, we feel sympathy for those who find that they cannot exercise their freedom by questioning this obvious outrage on humanity and walk away from the city.
Works Cited
Avila, Jim.” Hunger and Children in America: a Slow and Steady Starvation.” 17 August 2011.
Web.8 February 1013.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/US/hunger-children-america-slow-
steady-starvation/story?id=14328390
Cook, Sam. “Lukes Three Faces of Power.” Revise Sociology. 13 October 2011. Web. 8 February
2013. http://revisesociology.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/2-lukes-3-faces-of-power/
Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”Rohan n.d. Web. 8 February 2013.
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/dunnweb/rprnts.omelas.pdf
