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 Winds 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 childs
  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.