September 9, 2016 - 16:30
In reading my essay, I believe that Ursula LeGuin could potentially view my story as the story of ‘those who walked away.’ The narrative that emerged from my experience at Tri-Co explored both connections and identity. The program gathered a group of people who all desired change. This common connection allowed us all to be on the same wavelength and to almost subconsciously agree on certain topics. In this sense, we were similar to those of LeGuin's characters that walked away from the corrupted society of the Omelas. These individuals decided that living in false happiness created out of the suffering of others and ignorance was intolerable and walked away instead of staying compliant.
I believe that LeGuin was representing the concepts of submission and rebellion in her story. The individuals who eventually deluded themselves into believing the horrendous abuse was necessary found themselves with a mindset that prevented change. Through LeGuin’s eyes, the very essence of the Tri-Co program itself could represent the acknowledgement of societal flaws. The very fact that there is a group of people willing to gather and share their opinions and stories of hardship in order to perpetuate change would be almost symbolic.
In the society of the Omelas, those who walked away wandered into a place that was even more indescribable than the flawed and contradicting society of the Omelas. I believe that LeGuin could possibly connect this mysterious place with Tri-Co. Those of the Omelas that refused to stay dormant in the face of injustice wandered away from the land of privileged blindness. I would like to think that the place that they wandered into was a place full of people who had a similar mindset and set of morals. By choosing to walk away from the ‘perfect’ society of the Omelas, these individuals chose a route that isolated themselves from familiarity. However, by entering the place where others that have abandoned the Omelas gather, they must have found themselves surrounded by people with similar beliefs even when they thought they were alone.
The inexplicableness of the place the ones who walked away ended up in comes from the realization of how different everyone is. The idea of individuality is hard to see when emerging from a land where you were the singular outlier. I bet many of the ones who walked away were shocked by how different they were from each other as I was with the other participants in Tri-Co. While they all had a similar opinion in that they did not want to accept the darkness of the Omelas, they each differed individually. When one lives as the outlier, the existence of others who had similar beliefs could only be imaged based on one’s own self. It would be hard to imagine that others who had left the Omelas were any different from you, if you were the singular existence in your own generation.
To LeGuin, the Omelas thrived off of the symbolic suffering of one seemingly timeless child. When looked at symbolically, LeGuin’s story represented a society that sealed away guilt and in doing so birthed false happiness. The one’s who walked away were also similar to the participants in Tri-Co in that both recognized the guilt that had been hidden away be the upper echelons of society. Some of us could be even represented in the abused child for many come from a minority that has suffered some sort of discrimination. LeGuin may have read my experience in Tri-Co as the progressed reality of the message sent in her story.
Additionally, LeGuin may have seen Tri-Co in a light where the participants were more than just parallels to her characters that walked away. While these characters did seem take the moral high route by walking away from ignorance, there were none that actually tried to do anything to change the condition of society, the blindness. Tri-Co may have represented the future of the ‘ones who walked away.’ It may have foreshadowed what would happen in the future of the characters that have left the Omelas. The walking away was just the first step, and the next would naturally be actively advocating for change.
In context of the actual argument of my essay, I believe that LeGuin would agree with my point that there is complexity in connections. The deep connections the people of the Omelas made with each other resulted from their shared knowledge. The fact that they all knew about the tragedy that allowed their prosperity and still chose to be purposefully ignorant must have been a strong factor in their bond. This singular factor was enough to unite all of the society, even if they had different identities. However, the complexity lies in the thoughts of those who walked away. The Omelas live in a life full of simplicity, without any true individuality. It is different for the characters that walked away because they all had different goals and moral reasons for their actions. While they all have an underlying connection through their abandonment of the Omelas, the connections between these people may have stemmed from deeper notions than just their act of abandonment.
Both LeGuin’s story and my own have connections and parallels that allow comparisons to be made between the two. The similar nature of both of our stories has allowed me to conclude that LeGuin would most likely agree with my own argument and view my story as a parallel or a foreshadowing of her own characters and story.