Any Real Joy

I don't have an answer, but I can ask more questions. 
  Why did the child have to suffer in order for everyone else to have endless pleasure?  Why, instead of quietly leaving, did the ones who walk away from Omelas not collectively try to free or help the child?  Why did the child say, "I can be good?"  Was it because some sort of misdeed that he or she was chosen to be locked away?  It seems the child never grows any older.

  Perhaps Le Guin's father's occupation stirred her interest in other cultures, even make-believe ones.

The author seemed to interact with the reader several times.  "As you like it," she would say, as if you were the one who should decide how Omelas -- some kind of Utopia? -- should be.

There is emphasis on this kind of tinny, artificial freedom.  The horses don't wear bridles.  The children often don't wear clothes.  She suggests that people in Omelas should be free to be physically intimate with whomever they choose, for whatever reason.  I thought it was interesting that, even though she described the people of Omelas as happy, she used more physical, biological terms than she did emotional ones.  "...rapture of the flesh."

A quote that stood out to me:
"Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive."
To me, most of the behavior -- or at least the motive behind the behavior -- described in this story is destructive.  A me-centered mindset seems to plague the city.  And yet, "They know compassion.  It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science.  It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children."

Omelas is a very strange name.  At first I thought it was a kind of flower.  Then I thought it might be some other word spelled backwords or rearranged, but I don't think so now.

The people are described as happy, but where does the happiness come from?  They're described as joyful, but their emotions seem circumstantial.  Can that be described as joy?

What could the child represent?  It made me think of how we, including I, may "feel" very sorry for the underpriviledged -- sex slaves in third world countries, for instance, but don't do much (or anything) about it.  I think subconsioiusly we might use the warped thought process Le Guin describes: "...even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more.  It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy.  It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear.  Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment.  Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in." 

I suppose my last statement is what I walked away from this story with.  (Ba-dum-ching!)  What I still have trouble understanding is why the child has to suffer in order for everyone else not to. 

I must mention that, as a young woman, I was offended by the kind of shock-effect immorality described in the story.  It was shocking, and I really don't think that's a bad thing.  I want to be shocked.  I don't want that kind of subject matter to become normal or "not a big deal" to me.  It is certainly not that I don't think (I know) that depravity is rampant.  It's "reality", and we must face it in every day situations.  But in the time that I'm using to edify myself, should I read more about this kind of darkness?  This is something I continue to struggle with.

I look foward to our class discussions.