Stylistic elements are usually in service to a central theme. An author may carry a certain tone, or use a specific point of view, in order to build or respond to the theme. Stylistic Elements
Tone
Point of View
Mood
Period 1
Marqees Forrest
Ursula Le Guin is critical of the society of her readers. My point to this sentence is that the trouble that we get into is a bad habit to our community today. Our people in world embrace violence each day. In the story the child has been treated with violence and neglect for the people, so that they will be happy. “But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.” The point to this quote that it shows that people would lock away a problem so that they won’t feel despair in their lives. Its harsh to put someone’s live at risk just so they would live a happy live knowing that there’s guilt behind the “forgotten room”.
Gilaysha Kirkland
Ursula Le Guin builds a critical tone in the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by comparing the uncaring citizens’ happiness and the sympathetic citizens to a child single misery. The people of Omelas live in this perfect city without violence and guilt. They all live in this peace because they have a horrible source of relief. Under the city, a child is forever locked away in a basement. Those who go to see the child is either angered in disgust or sorrowed in sympathy. “They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery”. The child is neglected and mistreated, the people’s anger, failures, and downfalls unwillingly falls on the child’s shoulders. The people who feels sympathy cannot help it, but they have a critical option, to stay in the city and indorse the pain of know that it’s there in darkness alone, or leave the city of Omelas forever. “Each alone they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back”. Their decision falls upon them.
Ally Johnson
Ursula Le Guin bears a critical tone in her short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by chastising our society. This is supported by her powerful statement against us; "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual only evil interesting “. She questions our own happiness and the values we all have. That livng a happy, carefree life leaves you subject to unjust judgement while indulging in everyday evils seems to gain attention from others.
Miashanti Smith
Ursula is critical of society in the short story through her judgment of humanity in general. Not only does she point out the treatment of the child but she also critical our society but also how we view happiness and pain in it. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit encouraged by pedants and sophisticates of considering happiness as something rather stupid”. “Only pain is intellectual only evil interesting “.This example shows that Ursula feel in our society that we don’t in joy our happiness but we value our pain and find evil interesting. In this Ursula is critical of society in the short story by pointing out our problems happiness and pain.
Kayla Lacotta
Ursula LeGuin builds a critical tone in her short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. This is supported by the word choice she uses in describing both the child and the conditions he or she faced. “Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect.” This quote demonstrates a critical attitude towards the people of Omelas who calls the child “it” instead of by a name. This supports my point because the author is being critical of not only the people of Omelas, but of human society in general. She is also being critical of herself in the story because she also calls the child “it” rather than by the name he or she had before being locked away in the basement closet.
Dylan Menard
Ursula Le Guin builds a strong, critical tone through description and development of her characters, and through her unique settings. She does this, first of all, also through a very blunt word choice, in which she simply makes a strong statement. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” She speaks critically straight forward; dryly –not, however, without intelligence of her own topic– as if giving bad news, however in an accusing style.
Her setting, the perfect city of Omelas, most definitely impacts her tone. Such a bright environment is capitalized by the bleak environment of the child’s closet. Such a sharp contrast throws the reader off, painting a dark side both hidden from common view and obscene. This is used to rip the reader away from the happy scene that they’ve stumbled into, and as roughly as possible. The very descriptions of the characters –the miserable child and the conspiring citizens; the hypocrites of Omelas– also work in this way, increasingly so as the story progresses. In all, the tone is made critical through steeling purity, and generating a sharp contrast between the fundamentals of the story’s setting and character design.
Charles Hickerson
Authors tone is built up by her choice of words and analysis of the characters, the one example I will cover is the authors critical analysis of the child in the story. look at the words being used by the author. " It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbicile through fear, malnutrition , or neglect". can you feel the judgemental words, and their powerful meaning. This quote shows that the auothor wants you to feel and understand what the child is like and is going through.
Cynthia Frazier
Ursula Le Guin builds a critical tone in her short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by criticizing us, the citizens, and the child. Basically critical to the whole society of ours and there world. The author was critical in the story when she talked about the child, but by using the people of Omelas actions.” I will be good, it says. Please let me out. I will be good!” but they never answered. Their act of disrespect, and heartless toward the child. The author is critical to us because in Omelas there was no violence, their always happy, and they never let things bring down. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” Ursula makes it seem like we don’t appreciate our happiness or just don’t except it in to our everyday lives. We aren’t selfish, bitter, and Crile!
Ausha Meggett
Lynica McClellan
Ursula Kroeber’s tone in the passage is critical and this is demonstrated by how she talks about the citizens of Omelas. Kroeber is always contrasting the people of Omelas to the people in our world, she’s constantly being judgmental, and a big problem in the story is a miserable child. “To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement.” She’s making the people of Omelas seem selfish and that the child isn’t worth it. By her using the words single and small makes the child seem completely irrelevant which explains her critical tone. Period 3
Desiree Anderson
Ursula Le Guin is critical of our society through her tone with her word choices. In the story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", she says "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil is interesting." She compares our society to Omelas, criticizing us for seeing happiness as a want, rather than a need. It's considered a "luxury", whereas in Omelas, happiness is a large pillar in their society. In the quote, she uses words such as trouble, bad habit and stupid. These words are generally negative, and are used to describe our society’s ways, or “habits” as bad. Without comparison, it doesn’t seem as bad, but when being compared to Omelas, it makes the city of Omelas look like the model, and our society as the contrast. According to Le Guin, our society would rather take violence and pain more seriously than happiness, and in her eyes, that’s what our problem is.
Cheyenne Brown
Ursula La Guin is critical of human society in this story. In this story Ursula tells how human society is now bad. She says, “the trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” This shows that she feels our society is not happy. Whe Ursula says “we have a bad habit” she is stepping out of the story and into our society. She is now talking about the reader instead of the characters in the story.
Tamara Butler
In the story of The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas, the author Ursula Le Guin criticizes the reader’s way of living with her word choice. Le Guin creates the city of Omelas as this happy place to show us how different our world is. She criticizes our way of living and thinking by calling us out. She says, “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.” She emphasizes her point by using negative words to describe positive words. We don’t typically think of stupidity when someone mentions happiness but to repeat this strategy shows that Le Guin knows what she is doing and has a point.
Kaylanickole Childs
Ursula Le Guin builds up the tone critically in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by first starting out as just describing a happy city and then she describes how everyone in the city isn’t truly happy, for there is a child that lives in horrible conditions. This child is suffering for the whole city. You could say that the child is a sacrifice or offering for the city’s happiness. “In the basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas…a room about three paces long and two wide…a child is sitting.” This child has been locked away from the rest of the city, in basically a small supply closet. Ursula Le Guin has changed the tone of the story from happy and well to mainly happiness and small suffering.
Aymil Clark
Christian Duncan
In the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, Ursula Le Guin criticizes the thought process and rationality of the people in our world through her word choice. She stresses the fact that the people in our world thrive off of negativity and disregard the positive aspects. “If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.” Le Guin is saying that if one dwells within darkness, this will soon be all they know and all they have. This will lead to nothing but calamity and destruction for mankind.
Deondre Gordon-Hale
The tone of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is critical of society. The tone is set up by the people in the story and how they act and are treated. The tone is critical because of the way society is. The story talks about how the people are treated and how they have choices in whether they leave or not. This makes the tone critical. If the boy wasnt in the story it would be a perfect world and the tone wouldnt be critical.
Kendan Jones
Ursula Le Guin is trying to prove the point that people have a cruel way of obtaining peace. The way she does that is by emphasizing on how they lock up a single child who suffers for the whole city to have peace. “They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there.” This quotation reveals that Le Guin argues that it’s in human nature to wrong at least one person or thing to relieve themselves of their own pain or guilt. The citizens of Omelas simply neglect this child in order to obtain and sustain their peace and tranquility. Le Guin looks down on human way of obtaining peace destroying others. Le Guin’s theory is that we can never obtain true peace without harming someone else, and she uses Omelas as the way to show us.
Crystal Short
In the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas the author Ursula Kroeber is critical about the people in the story. She shows the people of omelas don’t do anything for the boy because they want happiness. “All the people know the boy is there. Some know why and some don’t but they all know their happiness depends on this Childs misery”. This quotation shows that the boy doesn’t exist to anybody besides their problems and misery. This supports my point because it show how selfish they are and how they rather be happy then help a boy who is being punish as far as he know for nothing.
Quinton Stewart The author shows that society is heartless and would do anything that they want for happiness and their town. She feels that society is cruel because they lock away as innocent boy for the joy and happiness of others. The story starts off happy and such a peaceful place but as the story unfolds a secret comes from the dark. The society of Omelas is not a cruel society except for one action – keeping the boy locked up and miserable. “They all understand that their happiness…depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.” This shows that she thinks society is twisted because they know and choose to do nothing.
Darah Thornton
The author builds a critical tone of society by criticizing “us” whenever a good thing would happen in the story whereas in real life if this were to happen we would look upon it a different and a more negative way. The author speaks as if she knows how everyone in our society thinks, feels and understands one another. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants, and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” She says this as if she personally seen this, and on multiple occasions. She is making society seem like a melancholy place where we never smile, or even want to. “We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” She says that society is cruel and harsh, and we do nothing do change it; we even want that to happen. She says “If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it.”
Natasha Todd
“Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive.”
In The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, the city of Omelas is, in many ways, the complete opposite of our current society. Ursula is trying to prove that modern day society is backwards. From beginning to end, Ursula breaks humans down, bit by bit, exposing who we really are. We find joy in the bad that takes place in our lives. Omelas is imagined to be a perfect city, but just like the modern world, they’re thriving off the bad thing that’s taking place in their city. However, they thrive in a different way. They become better because of their bad, while we get worse. For humans, pain is necessary for us to go on. We feel that there needs to be a balance of good and bad, and if there wasn’t the world wouldn’t be the same.
Quinton Williamson The tone of the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula Le Guin conjures a serious, critical, reflective tone. This is displayed thoroughly throughout the the story. The blissful city of Omela is a near-perfect utopia, populated by joyful and intelligent citizens. However the city holds one dark secret. The joy of everyone in the city relies on the misery of 1 child. Which may make you think why must one suffer for all, can’t the suffering be spread evenly. Some people think nothing of it in the story, although there are those who are bothered so deeply that they want no part of it and leave Omelas. So a major question is leave blissfulness forever or stay and torture a small soul. Period 6
Aliyah Brooks Ursula Le Guin builds up a critical tone by being critical of the human race, society, and how the society works. The author also created a critical tone by expressing how the people of Omelas were treating the child. “Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they understand that their beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.” They know that their happiness would not even be in the picture if the child’s miserable lifestyle did not exist in this perfectly world filled with happiness. The words that Ursula used helped her express her thoughts and build up a great critical tone.
Mariah Geletko
Ursula Le Guin builds a critical tone in her story by pointing out the treatment of the child. “ The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes- the child has no understanding of time or interval- sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people are there. One of them, may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes.” When she tells us that the door is always locked as readers we get a feeling of being trapped, of being forced to stay in a place that makes us uncomfortable. Also by saying that some of the people come in and kick the child she adds to the fact that the people of the town don’t treat the child well.
Javon Jones
Ursula Le Guin builds a critical tone in her story by describing how the human race has lost all happiness. Through the story she goes on about how the human race loses happiness and they do heartless things, such as how they treated the child in the basement. “We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man.” Now this quote shows how the “humans” are no longer happy. How they lost all hope and what they did was without thought .
Zack McQueen
Ursula Le Guin shows critical in her tone with the connection it makes about us to them. IN the story peopl are happy and joyful but compared to us shse says "we ahave almost lost hold: we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy." This shows she's saying we'll never have true happiness but the people of omelas does. Also describing a tortured soul shows this is critical because of how she uses the word festered and continually in the sentence: "It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually." The way it's telling you sounds critical because of how serious it is talking about someone's misery.
Starr Mitchell
Ursula Le Guin is being critical of the human race in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. She is judging the fact that we (society) lack happiness. “We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” Ursula is saying that we had lost the hold of happiness, what it means, and what it feels like. It’s hard to point out happiness in anyone. She criticizes the fact that society is always encouraging all the bad things. So that’s all we know.
Darion Morton Ursula has a critical tone towards the human race in the short story. She calls humans out for their bad behaviors and point out the way we treat each other. She says,”Trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” She says we encourage and accept bad behavior like crime and evil. Basically, she states that we don’t appreciate happiness.
Dewill Perkins
One of the ways Ursula Le Guin is building a critical tone is, taking more time to talk about how Omelas and its major problems. Like how some of the people in Omelas feel as if they have to walk away because they can’t stay, knowing that there is a child locked in a basement being mentally and physically abused. So they can be happy and free. “Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas.” They just leave because they don’t know what else they could do. Or they do know what they can do but they will rather just leave the town some they don’t have to worry about having the child trapped in the basement on their mind.
Chelsea Richie
Ursela le Gein is being critical on how the citizens treat the boy by ignoring him and being disrespectful to the child. This makes them seem like unhappy and selfish people. “I will be good, it says “please let me out, I will be good”. They never answer.”This quote explains that she’s being critical of the citizens and how they are ignoring him and being disrespectful on how they treat the child. They don’t care or tend to care for the child’s happiness as long as they’re willing to have happiness of their own. This supports my point because it explains that the citizens of omela’s are not willing to give up their own happiness for the child who is suffering. This makes the citizens seem like selfish and unhappy people.
Lindsay Smedley
the story the ones who walk away from omelas, the author Ursula K LeGuin is critical about how people put their own happiness first. The boy carries all the burden of the town for the sake of happiness and suffers isolation, fear, and pain. Nobody seems to care. the boy was treated very poorly for example in paragraph 7 “The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes,
Except that sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or
Interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person,
or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the
child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at
it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug
are hastily filled, the door is locked; the eyes disappear.” In the town of omelas everyone knows about the boy and his poor treatment, but nobody seems to care. Everyone ignores him and continue to live their happy lives. Throughout the story, it was describe of how happy the citizens are “this follows from the fact that
The people of Omelas are happy people.
Ian Snyder
Ursula builds a tone in The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas, which is very critical of the human race. In the story Ursula speaks about Omelas being happy, not having war, no kings, no money, no advertisements, etc. but says we (humans) are unhappy, non-peaceful, feel a need for pain, and embrace suffering. She mentions how we couldn’t imagine Omelas (Omelas being a city and a symbol for true happiness). A quote from the story supporting that would be, “They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much anymore. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description like this one tends to make certain assumptions.” In the first line of the quote Ursula says that they, the citizens of Omelas, were happy but not simple, and the last line says that with her description of Omelas we make assumptions, meaning we can’t even imagine happiness like that because all out pain and suffering makes it seem impossible. And the middle two lines are Ursula saying that the citizens of Omelas are happy and we aren’t. This supports my point because Ursula is pretty forwardly criticizing the human race.
Nicholas Stewart
The tone of The ones who walk away form omleas the author Urlsa de guin is trying to get a cross is that the citizens have a difficult choice on weather they should walk away form the city and weather treating the boy like garbage is a good idea. Tone of the passage is why society is able too cope with leaving omleas and weather the boy is worth leaving and the scoitey would rather leave the city than stay .
Jhordan Stoutmire
There are two things that you can say about Ursula’s critical tone in her short story. One of them is harsh, due to how the boy was treated and the situation he was in. Like in the text it says the boy was locked in a dark room with nothing but food and water. He is sitting on a cold cement floor that is covered in his fetuses and no light against his own will just to keep the world in peace and happiness. This leads to Ursula’s second critical to which is incredulous. The reason I say this is because Ursula was pointing out how our world (earth) is not that different from the world of Omelas. Just because Ursula this harsh thing to this one boy doesn’t mean the people on earth is that different. Knowing that people around the globe is killing, raping, and stealing for their special needs to themselves. Do you think that the earth is better than Omelas even though they did one crime on one person and nothing else, or are they equally wring? That is what Ursula is pointing out about the story through-out her critical tone.
Duvon Wiley-Brown
In the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas the author Ursela Le Guin is critical of the human race. In the story she calls out how humans take other peoples pain to bring them happiness. For example in the novel she writes “They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute player, could make no joyful music…..”. This quote means that if there were no bad predicaments in life, there wouldn’t be someone out there who is happy because he is almost at the edge of life. She used joyful to describe how the ones who don’t have any trials just go on living without a care. She ties all of this to being critical to the human’s race by saying the ones in pain continue to go through pain and the ones happy get happier
Stylistic Elements
Tone
Point of View
Mood
Period 1
Marqees Forrest
Ursula Le Guin is critical of the society of her readers. My point to this sentence is that the trouble that we get into is a bad habit to our community today. Our people in world embrace violence each day. In the story the child has been treated with violence and neglect for the people, so that they will be happy. “But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.” The point to this quote that it shows that people would lock away a problem so that they won’t feel despair in their lives. Its harsh to put someone’s live at risk just so they would live a happy live knowing that there’s guilt behind the “forgotten room”.
Gilaysha Kirkland
Ursula Le Guin builds a critical tone in the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by comparing the uncaring citizens’ happiness and the sympathetic citizens to a child single misery. The people of Omelas live in this perfect city without violence and guilt. They all live in this peace because they have a horrible source of relief. Under the city, a child is forever locked away in a basement. Those who go to see the child is either angered in disgust or sorrowed in sympathy. “They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery”. The child is neglected and mistreated, the people’s anger, failures, and downfalls unwillingly falls on the child’s shoulders. The people who feels sympathy cannot help it, but they have a critical option, to stay in the city and indorse the pain of know that it’s there in darkness alone, or leave the city of Omelas forever. “Each alone they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back”. Their decision falls upon them.
Ally Johnson
Ursula Le Guin bears a critical tone in her short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by chastising our society. This is supported by her powerful statement against us; "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual only evil interesting “. She questions our own happiness and the values we all have. That livng a happy, carefree life leaves you subject to unjust judgement while indulging in everyday evils seems to gain attention from others.
Miashanti Smith
Ursula is critical of society in the short story through her judgment of humanity in general. Not only does she point out the treatment of the child but she also critical our society but also how we view happiness and pain in it. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit encouraged by pedants and sophisticates of considering happiness as something rather stupid”. “Only pain is intellectual only evil interesting “.This example shows that Ursula feel in our society that we don’t in joy our happiness but we value our pain and find evil interesting. In this Ursula is critical of society in the short story by pointing out our problems happiness and pain.
Kayla Lacotta
Ursula LeGuin builds a critical tone in her short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. This is supported by the word choice she uses in describing both the child and the conditions he or she faced. “Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect.” This quote demonstrates a critical attitude towards the people of Omelas who calls the child “it” instead of by a name. This supports my point because the author is being critical of not only the people of Omelas, but of human society in general. She is also being critical of herself in the story because she also calls the child “it” rather than by the name he or she had before being locked away in the basement closet.
Dylan Menard
Ursula Le Guin builds a strong, critical tone through description and development of her characters, and through her unique settings. She does this, first of all, also through a very blunt word choice, in which she simply makes a strong statement. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” She speaks critically straight forward; dryly –not, however, without intelligence of her own topic– as if giving bad news, however in an accusing style.
Her setting, the perfect city of Omelas, most definitely impacts her tone. Such a bright environment is capitalized by the bleak environment of the child’s closet. Such a sharp contrast throws the reader off, painting a dark side both hidden from common view and obscene. This is used to rip the reader away from the happy scene that they’ve stumbled into, and as roughly as possible. The very descriptions of the characters –the miserable child and the conspiring citizens; the hypocrites of Omelas– also work in this way, increasingly so as the story progresses. In all, the tone is made critical through steeling purity, and generating a sharp contrast between the fundamentals of the story’s setting and character design.
Charles Hickerson
Authors tone is built up by her choice of words and analysis of the characters, the one example I will cover is the authors critical analysis of the child in the story. look at the words being used by the author. " It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbicile through fear, malnutrition , or neglect". can you feel the judgemental words, and their powerful meaning. This quote shows that the auothor wants you to feel and understand what the child is like and is going through.
Cynthia Frazier
Ursula Le Guin builds a critical tone in her short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by criticizing us, the citizens, and the child. Basically critical to the whole society of ours and there world. The author was critical in the story when she talked about the child, but by using the people of Omelas actions.” I will be good, it says. Please let me out. I will be good!” but they never answered. Their act of disrespect, and heartless toward the child. The author is critical to us because in Omelas there was no violence, their always happy, and they never let things bring down. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” Ursula makes it seem like we don’t appreciate our happiness or just don’t except it in to our everyday lives. We aren’t selfish, bitter, and Crile!
Ausha Meggett
Lynica McClellan
Ursula Kroeber’s tone in the passage is critical and this is demonstrated by how she talks about the citizens of Omelas. Kroeber is always contrasting the people of Omelas to the people in our world, she’s constantly being judgmental, and a big problem in the story is a miserable child. “To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement.” She’s making the people of Omelas seem selfish and that the child isn’t worth it. By her using the words single and small makes the child seem completely irrelevant which explains her critical tone.
Period 3
Desiree Anderson
Ursula Le Guin is critical of our society through her tone with her word choices. In the story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", she says "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil is interesting." She compares our society to Omelas, criticizing us for seeing happiness as a want, rather than a need. It's considered a "luxury", whereas in Omelas, happiness is a large pillar in their society. In the quote, she uses words such as trouble, bad habit and stupid. These words are generally negative, and are used to describe our society’s ways, or “habits” as bad. Without comparison, it doesn’t seem as bad, but when being compared to Omelas, it makes the city of Omelas look like the model, and our society as the contrast. According to Le Guin, our society would rather take violence and pain more seriously than happiness, and in her eyes, that’s what our problem is.
Cheyenne Brown
Ursula La Guin is critical of human society in this story. In this story Ursula tells how human society is now bad. She says, “the trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” This shows that she feels our society is not happy. Whe Ursula says “we have a bad habit” she is stepping out of the story and into our society. She is now talking about the reader instead of the characters in the story.
Tamara Butler
In the story of The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas, the author Ursula Le Guin criticizes the reader’s way of living with her word choice. Le Guin creates the city of Omelas as this happy place to show us how different our world is. She criticizes our way of living and thinking by calling us out. She says, “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.” She emphasizes her point by using negative words to describe positive words. We don’t typically think of stupidity when someone mentions happiness but to repeat this strategy shows that Le Guin knows what she is doing and has a point.
Kaylanickole Childs
Ursula Le Guin builds up the tone critically in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by first starting out as just describing a happy city and then she describes how everyone in the city isn’t truly happy, for there is a child that lives in horrible conditions. This child is suffering for the whole city. You could say that the child is a sacrifice or offering for the city’s happiness. “In the basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas…a room about three paces long and two wide…a child is sitting.” This child has been locked away from the rest of the city, in basically a small supply closet. Ursula Le Guin has changed the tone of the story from happy and well to mainly happiness and small suffering.
Aymil Clark
Christian Duncan
In the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, Ursula Le Guin criticizes the thought process and rationality of the people in our world through her word choice. She stresses the fact that the people in our world thrive off of negativity and disregard the positive aspects. “If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.” Le Guin is saying that if one dwells within darkness, this will soon be all they know and all they have. This will lead to nothing but calamity and destruction for mankind.
Deondre Gordon-Hale
The tone of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is critical of society. The tone is set up by the people in the story and how they act and are treated. The tone is critical because of the way society is. The story talks about how the people are treated and how they have choices in whether they leave or not. This makes the tone critical. If the boy wasnt in the story it would be a perfect world and the tone wouldnt be critical.
Kendan Jones
Ursula Le Guin is trying to prove the point that people have a cruel way of obtaining peace. The way she does that is by emphasizing on how they lock up a single child who suffers for the whole city to have peace. “They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there.” This quotation reveals that Le Guin argues that it’s in human nature to wrong at least one person or thing to relieve themselves of their own pain or guilt. The citizens of Omelas simply neglect this child in order to obtain and sustain their peace and tranquility. Le Guin looks down on human way of obtaining peace destroying others. Le Guin’s theory is that we can never obtain true peace without harming someone else, and she uses Omelas as the way to show us.
Crystal Short
In the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas the author Ursula Kroeber is critical about the people in the story. She shows the people of omelas don’t do anything for the boy because they want happiness. “All the people know the boy is there. Some know why and some don’t but they all know their happiness depends on this Childs misery”. This quotation shows that the boy doesn’t exist to anybody besides their problems and misery. This supports my point because it show how selfish they are and how they rather be happy then help a boy who is being punish as far as he know for nothing.
Quinton Stewart
The author shows that society is heartless and would do anything that they want for happiness and their town. She feels that society is cruel because they lock away as innocent boy for the joy and happiness of others. The story starts off happy and such a peaceful place but as the story unfolds a secret comes from the dark. The society of Omelas is not a cruel society except for one action – keeping the boy locked up and miserable. “They all understand that their happiness…depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.” This shows that she thinks society is twisted because they know and choose to do nothing.
Darah Thornton
The author builds a critical tone of society by criticizing “us” whenever a good thing would happen in the story whereas in real life if this were to happen we would look upon it a different and a more negative way. The author speaks as if she knows how everyone in our society thinks, feels and understands one another. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants, and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” She says this as if she personally seen this, and on multiple occasions. She is making society seem like a melancholy place where we never smile, or even want to. “We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” She says that society is cruel and harsh, and we do nothing do change it; we even want that to happen. She says “If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it.”
Natasha Todd
“Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive.”
In The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, the city of Omelas is, in many ways, the complete opposite of our current society. Ursula is trying to prove that modern day society is backwards. From beginning to end, Ursula breaks humans down, bit by bit, exposing who we really are. We find joy in the bad that takes place in our lives. Omelas is imagined to be a perfect city, but just like the modern world, they’re thriving off the bad thing that’s taking place in their city. However, they thrive in a different way. They become better because of their bad, while we get worse. For humans, pain is necessary for us to go on. We feel that there needs to be a balance of good and bad, and if there wasn’t the world wouldn’t be the same.
Quinton Williamson
The tone of the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula Le Guin conjures a serious, critical, reflective tone. This is displayed thoroughly throughout the the story. The blissful city of Omela is a near-perfect utopia, populated by joyful and intelligent citizens. However the city holds one dark secret. The joy of everyone in the city relies on the misery of 1 child. Which may make you think why must one suffer for all, can’t the suffering be spread evenly. Some people think nothing of it in the story, although there are those who are bothered so deeply that they want no part of it and leave Omelas. So a major question is leave blissfulness forever or stay and torture a small soul.
Period 6
Aliyah Brooks
Ursula Le Guin builds up a critical tone by being critical of the human race, society, and how the society works. The author also created a critical tone by expressing how the people of Omelas were treating the child. “Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they understand that their beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.” They know that their happiness would not even be in the picture if the child’s miserable lifestyle did not exist in this perfectly world filled with happiness. The words that Ursula used helped her express her thoughts and build up a great critical tone.
Mariah Geletko
Ursula Le Guin builds a critical tone in her story by pointing out the treatment of the child. “ The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes- the child has no understanding of time or interval- sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people are there. One of them, may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes.” When she tells us that the door is always locked as readers we get a feeling of being trapped, of being forced to stay in a place that makes us uncomfortable. Also by saying that some of the people come in and kick the child she adds to the fact that the people of the town don’t treat the child well.
Javon Jones
Ursula Le Guin builds a critical tone in her story by describing how the human race has lost all happiness. Through the story she goes on about how the human race loses happiness and they do heartless things, such as how they treated the child in the basement. “We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man.” Now this quote shows how the “humans” are no longer happy. How they lost all hope and what they did was without thought .
Zack McQueen
Ursula Le Guin shows critical in her tone with the connection it makes about us to them. IN the story peopl are happy and joyful but compared to us shse says "we ahave almost lost hold: we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy." This shows she's saying we'll never have true happiness but the people of omelas does. Also describing a tortured soul shows this is critical because of how she uses the word festered and continually in the sentence: "It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually." The way it's telling you sounds critical because of how serious it is talking about someone's misery.
Starr Mitchell
Ursula Le Guin is being critical of the human race in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. She is judging the fact that we (society) lack happiness. “We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” Ursula is saying that we had lost the hold of happiness, what it means, and what it feels like. It’s hard to point out happiness in anyone. She criticizes the fact that society is always encouraging all the bad things. So that’s all we know.
Darion Morton
Ursula has a critical tone towards the human race in the short story. She calls humans out for their bad behaviors and point out the way we treat each other. She says,”Trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” She says we encourage and accept bad behavior like crime and evil. Basically, she states that we don’t appreciate happiness.
Dewill Perkins
One of the ways Ursula Le Guin is building a critical tone is, taking more time to talk about how Omelas and its major problems. Like how some of the people in Omelas feel as if they have to walk away because they can’t stay, knowing that there is a child locked in a basement being mentally and physically abused. So they can be happy and free. “Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas.” They just leave because they don’t know what else they could do. Or they do know what they can do but they will rather just leave the town some they don’t have to worry about having the child trapped in the basement on their mind.
Chelsea Richie
Ursela le Gein is being critical on how the citizens treat the boy by ignoring him and being disrespectful to the child. This makes them seem like unhappy and selfish people. “I will be good, it says “please let me out, I will be good”. They never answer.”This quote explains that she’s being critical of the citizens and how they are ignoring him and being disrespectful on how they treat the child. They don’t care or tend to care for the child’s happiness as long as they’re willing to have happiness of their own. This supports my point because it explains that the citizens of omela’s are not willing to give up their own happiness for the child who is suffering. This makes the citizens seem like selfish and unhappy people.
Lindsay Smedley
the story the ones who walk away from omelas, the author Ursula K LeGuin is critical about how people put their own happiness first. The boy carries all the burden of the town for the sake of happiness and suffers isolation, fear, and pain. Nobody seems to care. the boy was treated very poorly for example in paragraph 7 “The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes,
Except that sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or
Interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person,
or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the
child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at
it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug
are hastily filled, the door is locked; the eyes disappear.” In the town of omelas everyone knows about the boy and his poor treatment, but nobody seems to care. Everyone ignores him and continue to live their happy lives. Throughout the story, it was describe of how happy the citizens are “this follows from the fact that
The people of Omelas are happy people.
Ian Snyder
Ursula builds a tone in The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas, which is very critical of the human race. In the story Ursula speaks about Omelas being happy, not having war, no kings, no money, no advertisements, etc. but says we (humans) are unhappy, non-peaceful, feel a need for pain, and embrace suffering. She mentions how we couldn’t imagine Omelas (Omelas being a city and a symbol for true happiness). A quote from the story supporting that would be, “They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much anymore. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description like this one tends to make certain assumptions.” In the first line of the quote Ursula says that they, the citizens of Omelas, were happy but not simple, and the last line says that with her description of Omelas we make assumptions, meaning we can’t even imagine happiness like that because all out pain and suffering makes it seem impossible. And the middle two lines are Ursula saying that the citizens of Omelas are happy and we aren’t. This supports my point because Ursula is pretty forwardly criticizing the human race.
Nicholas Stewart
The tone of The ones who walk away form omleas the author Urlsa de guin is trying to get a cross is that the citizens have a difficult choice on weather they should walk away form the city and weather treating the boy like garbage is a good idea. Tone of the passage is why society is able too cope with leaving omleas and weather the boy is worth leaving and the scoitey would rather leave the city than stay .
Jhordan Stoutmire
There are two things that you can say about Ursula’s critical tone in her short story. One of them is harsh, due to how the boy was treated and the situation he was in. Like in the text it says the boy was locked in a dark room with nothing but food and water. He is sitting on a cold cement floor that is covered in his fetuses and no light against his own will just to keep the world in peace and happiness. This leads to Ursula’s second critical to which is incredulous. The reason I say this is because Ursula was pointing out how our world (earth) is not that different from the world of Omelas. Just because Ursula this harsh thing to this one boy doesn’t mean the people on earth is that different. Knowing that people around the globe is killing, raping, and stealing for their special needs to themselves. Do you think that the earth is better than Omelas even though they did one crime on one person and nothing else, or are they equally wring? That is what Ursula is pointing out about the story through-out her critical tone.
Duvon Wiley-Brown
In the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas the author Ursela Le Guin is critical of the human race. In the story she calls out how humans take other peoples pain to bring them happiness. For example in the novel she writes “They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute player, could make no joyful music…..”. This quote means that if there were no bad predicaments in life, there wouldn’t be someone out there who is happy because he is almost at the edge of life. She used joyful to describe how the ones who don’t have any trials just go on living without a care. She ties all of this to being critical to the human’s race by saying the ones in pain continue to go through pain and the ones happy get happier