*Sigh* "My Hero!"

There are many people that have touched my life without me ever meeting them and I definitely view them as heroes; for instance, people who have fought for freedom or equality rights, or simply standing up for what they believe in. However, I feel like it will be easier for me to describe what a hero is after  I describe my mother. I love both my parents, they are amazing, but my mother and I have a complex relationship; yet I absolutely view her as my personal hero- guardian angel like.The fact that she is able to juggle so much at a time with work (a boss who is a total nut), a family (a large and obnoxious one) and everything that comes along with those things is incredible. It may not sound like a lot, but believe me, my mother puts up with a lot from her work and still manages to touch peoples' lives every day at the senior's home she works at. She takes care of everyone at work and out of work. That's a general hero trait isn't it? - Selflessness? Well that's my mama! I don't have a lot of time to right about this, and plus I admit it is quite sappy, but this is my very brief overview about one of my heroes. I feel as though this may across mushy, or lame, but when I think of a hero in my head, she is definitely one of the people that pop into my head. So why not write about her? The sad thing is that I don't think she knows that she's viewed this way in my mind. From all our fighting I'm sure it may even come to a shock at first to her!

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"

Question One: If you were a citizen of Omelas, would you stay or would you walk away?

After my first read of the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin, I thought that perhaps the people who walked away from the town were taking a plunge into their own exile: the same alienation which the imprisoned child in the town faces. I also considered though, wouldn’t that make them cowards for just walking away from the town? Simply leaving the child there and frankly running away from their problems? I agree with the second option, that the people who walk away from Omelas are running away from their problems without doing anything to help the situation- it is selfish and a useless effort to fix any issue. However, the ones who stay in Omelas are also selfish in the sense that they just learn to live with the poor child’s emotional and physical abuse and believe that the child’s suffering keeps their town flourishing.

             Thus, if I were a citizen of Omelas I would like to believe that I would be heroic, take the child with me and leave forever, or perhaps take the child out of its claustrophobic room and stay within the town and face consequences there. Maybe nothing would change in the town; maybe everything will still flourish and the child can live freely. It is a utopia isn’t it? So why not? However, Le Guin does state that "they [the people of Omelas] would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do" (3); It is the idea that the whole society would crumble if the child were to be freed. Thus how heroic would it be if I saved the child, but then a whole society suffers? This increasingly complicates the matter at hand and I believe Le Guin really traps her readers in Omelas.

            In order to fully answer my question of “would I walk away from Omelas?” I need to reflect on question number three as well: to what extent is Omelas an analogy of our own society? Simply because although I say I want to be heroic, Omelas can be related to our modern society. The fact is we all wear clothes (at least the majority of the time). Where do those clothes come from? Maybe some from your grandma, but others come from sweatshops in undeveloped areas of the world in which some employees are young children. Do people still wear clothes? Yes, including myself. My point is that I’m not doing anything about it, I could boycott Nike or another name brand, but honestly I do not know which stores exactly do sell clothes by underdeveloped areas, probably quite a few though. This makes me stuck in my own Omelas in which I know the problem exists, but I’m not truly doing anything about it. I absolutely hate to admit that sad truth, but I believe I am also stuck in Omelas.