Lesson 9 The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

1. Lesson 9 The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas Ursula Le Guin

2. Objectives of teaching: • 1. To understand the text properly; • 2. To analyse the structure of the text; • 3. To understand the deeper meaning of the text; • 4. To appreciate the language features

3. I. Background information • 1. About the author • Ursula Le Guin(1929- ): a well-know science fiction and fantasy writer. Her writings force us to re-examin many of the things we once took for granted, like our cities, our political and social structures. Some of her novels are A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Fareast Shore (1972), The Dispossessed (1974), and The Beginning Place (1980). Her shorter works include two collections: The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975) and Orsinian Tales (1976), and Sur: A Summary Report of the Yelcho Expedition to the Atlantic, 1909-10 (1983).

4. I. Background information • 2. Omelas: a fictional name for an ideal city described by the writer.

5. I. Background information • 3. Allegory • Allegory, in literature, is a symbolic story that serve as a disguised representation for meanings other than those indicated on the surface. The characters in an alllegory often have no individual personality, but are embodiments of moral qualities and other abstractions. The allegory is closely related to parable, fable, and metaphor, differing from them largely in intricacy and length. Although allegory is still used by some authors, its popularity as a literary form has declined in favor of a more personal form of symbolic expression.

6. II. Type of literature • The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas may be called a piece of allegorical description. Omelas is a fictional city of happiness envisaged by the writer. In this allegorical description, the writer describes emotionally and colorfully the city of Omelas and its citizens.

7. III. Theme of this allegorical description • The theme of this allegorical description is provocative: the nature of happiness and on what it depends. The writer states her view very clearly in one sentence: “Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, what is destructive ”. What the citizens of Omelas do not have or do not wish to have may be classed as things that are destructive of happiness.

8. IV. Structure analysis • Paragraphs 1, 4, 5 and 6 describe the colorful celebrations of the Festival of Summer. • Paragraphs 2 and 3 describe the people of Omelas and their views on happiness. • Paragraph 8 describes the misery and suffering of the child. • Paragraphs 9, 10 and 12 describe the attitude of most people and their reactions to the child’s suffening. • Paragraph 14 describes the different attitude and reactions of a few. • The short paragraphs (2, 7, 11, and 13) serve to introduce new topics or ideas. • The last paragraph stands out sharply from among all the others. It is the most interesting and thought-provoking paragraph. The author puts forward the problem but does not supply the answers, thus allowing the readers to give free rein to their imagination.

9. V. Writing techniques 1. The use of specific words 2. a variety of sentence structure • long periodic, • loose sentences with a string of participial phrase modifiers, • short powerful sentences, • short elliptical sentences, • rhetorical questions, • absolute constructions

10. I. Background information • 3. figures of speech: • Simile • Metaphor

11. VI. Assignments • 1. Collect examples of periodic sentences, loose sentences, elliptical sentences, rhetorical questions, absolute constructions in the text. • 2. Collect examples of similes and metaphors.