September 18, 2015 - 16:38
I was on my way to Park for my calculus class. On my way, humming hymns that I had recently learned from church last Sunday, I saw four hammocks slinging between the trees and a bright azure sky ever more brightening with scintillating sunlight. Maybe I unconsciously indulged myself too much to all the peacefulness and bucolic ambience amid the academic tension, ten minutes right before the calculus class. I thought I was on the right track to arrive at Park on the right time –until I “slipped” over the stairs and realized I was in front of Bern Schwartz Fitness Center. I stood up again, realizing it was the stairs that made me tumble. Since then, whenever I am on my way to Park, I try to be more cautious with the stairs and the path that I am on to see if I am going to the right place.
This is how I see “slippage.” Nobody intends to fall down when he or she is walking down the street. Nobody intends to hurt people when talking to others. But we all “slip” once in our life time because we unintentionally, unconsciously and mistakenly take a wrong path when millions of paths are ahead of us. We fall down and realize how wrongfully we had ever gone. I see the stairs –or obstacles- that made me fall down as the pain of others incurred by me; the sore that followed that I felt after I fell down as the realization of how I had accidentally caused pain to others. Leaving the stairs behind, I tell to myself to be more careful and more cautious next time, not to make the same mistake: walking in a wrong path, encountering obstacles and falling down.
Three types of people depicted in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Le Guin have all gone through the process of “slippage,” but in all different ways. As their reactions and attitudes to “slippage” differ, the consequences of their falling down are all diverse too.
The first slippage happens when the adults in Omelas realize and understand the real foundation of their pleasure. The adults unconsciously took a wrong path of causing pain to the boy in the locked door by some of them kicking the door and others merely standing there watching and checking out the boy’s presence as bystanders. Rather than going back and reflecting the obstacles –which would be the misery of the boy- that made them to fall down, however, they tend to neglect the absence of the obstacle and enjoy the pleasure that negligence mustered. Even worse, amid “a clamor of bells… the Festival of Summer… the rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags…a music beating faster… a shimmering of gong and tambourine”, the adults of Omelas became so numbed with the pleasure from all these superficialities that they tended to take wrong paths continuously but consciously (Le Guin, 1). They became so indifferent to the boy’s pain and started to take pleasure from it that they eventually acknowledge their happiness “depend[s] wholly on th[e] child’s abominable miseries” (Le Guin, 1). Even though they might have accidentally stepped into the wrong path of causing pain to the boy by being the bystanders, they might not have regarded their source of pleasure from the boy’s misery if they had ever looked back what made them to slip. Their numbness to the pleasure exacerbated as they did not go through the whole process of “slippage”, in which people should have repented and reflected themselves at the end.
Children in Omelas have gone through the process of “slippage” too. They unconsciously took the wrong path for it was the adults that led them to the darkest secret of the society’s pleasure. They slipped and fell down, but realized what made them to fall –the boy’s misery. Unlike the adults, children were “always shocked and sickened at the sight” and felt “anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations” (Le Guin, 4). The children differed from the adults, because they went through the process of repentance and reflection as they went “home in tears… brood[ing] over it for weeks or years” (Le Guin, 4). And this process of “slippage” might become a toehold for their growth and maturity. Even though, the children’s presence in front of the door unwittingly aggravated the boy’s loneliness and despair, as long as they look back at the obstacle they slipped over, they will feel the same grievances and the same outrage when they first encountered the boy’s presence in the little dark room.
The last category of people in Omelas is those who refuse to “slip” at all –those who do “not go home to weep or rage, [do] not, in fact, go home at all” and “walk down the street alone…straight out of the city of Omelas” (Le Guin, 4). These people run away and refuse to take either of the paths they could go consciously or unconsciously. They carefully seek for the path to the city that would entail epitomic happiness, by trying not to fall over the obstacles in front of them. It is almost impossible, however, to find and settle in a place where the true genuine happiness exists without slipping –because it is through the constant series of slipping that people gain a chance to ruminate about themselves and about what they really pursuit as their pleasure. Moreover, living in a complex society where encountering and communicating with people from diverse background is inevitable, it is almost impossible to choose not to slip and stay away from the path for there will be another connecting path that would lead us to slip eventually.
Adults, children and those who refuse to slip in Omelas might sound like people who are living in one confined imaginary city. But they reflect people, us, and the society that we are living now. Slippage, of course, entails the meaning that somebody was emotionally hurt and affronted, even though there wasn’t any maleficent intention. But through slippage, not only do we get to sneak in through the doors for self-reflection and find out who we really are, but also to the doors that “yield to personal and subjective truth” that would lead us “into new thought and order” by slipping into unexpected abnormal path (Dalke, Web).
Works Consulted
Dalke, Anne "Slipping into Something More (Un)Comfortable: Untangling Identity, Unsettling Community." DRAFT chapter for Steal This Classroom: Teaching and Learning Unbound, book manuscript by Anne Dalke and Jody Cohen, forthcoming with punctum press, Summer 2016.
LeGuin, Ursula The Ones Who Walk Away from Ormelas. The Wind's Twelve Quarters. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.