Examples Of Parallel Guilt By Ursula Le Guin

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Parallel Guilt The short story by Ursula Le Guin is set in what, at first, appears to be a utopian society. This later turns out to be untrue as the only way for the citizens of Omelas must live with the fact that they essentially torture and abuse a young child to keep this perfect way of life. For those who cannot take the harsh reality of this utopia, they leave Omelas and go somewhere even more unimaginable, nobody knows where they go but the citizens of Omelas seem to. There are many parallels between Omelas and America, both when this story was written in the 1970’s and modern day. One such parallel is the way in which we treat the lowest and most vulnerable in our societies. Treatment of the child in Omelas is paralleled to American society in how the abused child …show more content…

While this rings true a large amount of the time, when it comes to the lowest and most desperate of us, we seem to turn a blind eye and do nothing to help. We act as if these people did something to be born into a struggling family or environment which leaves them little room to improve their social and economic standing. “They begin to realize that even if the child could be released … vague pleasure of warmth and food … too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy” (Guin 4). In America, some of us have this same mindset when it comes to the poor, we could try and help them succeed and have better lives but the common misconception is that they must have done something to deserve their current situation. Another way of thinking in America today is that those less fortunate have lived in poverty and obscurity for far too long and would not be able to adapt properly to a new way of life. These are just two examples of how some in our society view the idea of helping those deprived of the opportunities to

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