Combining Marxism with Deconstructionism

 

Angela Fields

English 2700

Marlena Stanford

04/18/2018

The Lens in which We Maintain ‘Society’

            ‘The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.’

            ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.’     

Karl Marx

The connections we make between our present and past societies and the opposing ideals and structures therein are often reflected in the literary fictions of writers. We can interpret them as the author’s perception of the world around them and the social structures they feel themselves a part. Or perhaps we may find a society that is potential in conjunction to similarities through present major events/observations, or the perceived divides that the author find themselves placed to one side or another. By doing this, rather than seeing simple works of fiction, we can create an analysis containing higher meanings and present day relevance that is useful through their supplementary nature, outside the work for societal and internal understanding surrounded by such conflicts and comparisons.

In this study of  ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ by Ursula Le Guin, and similar works, clear struggle of ideologies, perceptions both found within and without, and internalized conclusions citizens have in regard to the status of the orders around them are evident and relatable in reality despite their more fantastical presentations through these fictions.

To briefly summarize the piece starts off with the a vision of a city living in harmony and not lacking in joy. The narrator struggles to describe such a thing to the level in which they themselves see it, offering the reader ideas for revision in order for them to see it more completely should they so choose to include the various elements. Even including these compromises in the vision the narrator, adding more to the scene of a festival and the splendors of the city, feels the need to include the condition that may make the perhaps unbelieved idea of such a place more credibility.  It is then that a child living the complete opposite of the previous vision of the people of Omelas is described and the knowledge of the child that all in Omelas have when they seem capable of understanding, usually between the ages of eight and twelve. This child exists in total misery by the condition of the place in which it lives hidden within the glorious city but is also the reason all others are able to enjoy such happiness. After this description the narrator imparts to the reader that there is another instance of potential disbelief for the reader is that some, after learning about the child, choose to leave the city and that they go to a place even less believable than Omelas.

From this work, questions commonly seen as abstract arise;  Would truth exist if one did not know a lie? Can joy without pain, or freedom without slavery? Such questions, though hard, if not impossible to answer, are posed on social matters so large and unavoidably intertwined to the going ons of the everyday. Because of these many occasions for contemplation, such study may well find pertinence to show the measures we go through to question but sadly less often and for various reasons, seek answer.

 For the people of Omelas, who could be seen to deny such paradoxes, find life free from such potentially cancerous answers. To them a perfect, happy place, free of all things terrible is dependent on the misery, suffering, and imprisonment of a single child. Should this child be brought to the level of joy found by the rest of Omelas, then all such enjoyment would vanish as the story specifies. Being this condition, the suffrage of this single child in exchange for the all the joy in Omelas, is absolute, acceptance is found by the majority of the citizens of Omelas. The symbolic relevance of similar conditions are evident all around us, though not often as strictly are nonetheless present. Many who live in our current society fall under conditions of socioeconomic status, and find contentment in the simple marvels of living and live it without question to the possible cost either of their own or the world as a whole. This could be seen through our divides, our evolutions in time yet stagnant incorporation of classism, one of the largest of binaries that we live by. According to the narrator, ‘they were not barbarians’ and did not ‘keep slaves,’ though as readers, we may argue that they were and they did, at least in the case of the one child. Throughout history we can see evidence of the hypocrisy among our race, our socially created and upheld divides. Only when some of us get a glimpse of the hardship some of this world suffer or the world itself (environmentally), do we begin to question the morality of this system, the balance of it, and the possible need for change? Sadly still, only a few of us chose that harder path, that change that may result in a better life at less a loathsome trade, just as the few who walk away from Omelas choose to take or make at the end of the story.

Within the correlations to the here and now and to the maybe and was for the people of Omelas, the question then may become; can such an ideal society truly exist if not for one either within it or without, and the knowledge that others exist without its assumed perfection? Can that perfection even be, if imperfection were not known? If the center is not the center or even a center at all when ‘defined’ by deconstructionism who is to really say, in both worlds, what is perfect?  This truth must live within those that deny it, must remain outside it as well. Noone is perfect and noone is imperfect and this is the base of everything. The idea of the child is pushed off, yet held onto as stability needed as the very principles it is built upon, in every regard, could potentially crumble. The structure of this concept of a place or even superstructure itself in which we live and work, with its laws, its arts, its religions, and its philosophies are seen and defined by the spaces many parts of the world should lack. If it is true for the citizens of Omelas that for the chance to bring happiness to one, the happiness of thousands would be thrown away, could the same be true that the peace and security many of this world enjoy be dependent on the lack thereof of others? The struggles of each member of this world living are placed in the blurred lines of social and economic orders, defined by yet simultaneously dismissed in order to maintain stability.

 For those that walk away from Omelas it's because of these questions they find need of answers. To do that, they step outside Omelas or themselves and all they thought they knew, to better define and understand those meanings. They seek what may not be there to find but know that within them imperfection is just as much a part of them as the once perfect image of themselves was found in the ignorance of its opposition. It is after, “they know that they, like the child, are not free,” the structure of the story’s world and the superstructure without of our own, truly meet each other halfway. The author herself stresses the difficulty she finds in, “how is one to tell about joy?...but to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” It may be because one can no longer blindly accept joy exclusively. We are no longer able to define it alone. It must be done by what it is not. Only then do we accept that image, that notion, free of doubt or rejection--that of what peace may be, should those qualities we juxtapose against it be also allowed.

The narrator of this story, by attempting to paint the initial picture of Omelas soon finds the challenge through that conflict of what is, by what it is not. Finding one vision to convey is difficult for the narrator when what would constitute as a perfect place is up to the interpretation of the one who views it. What is paradise for one may not be paradise for all or even any other. This is indicated when the narrator says, “I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I can not suit you all.” It is not until one envisions the place to be as they would have it, does the act of free play behind such varying ideas become dashed by the narrator explaining the last image. The revelation of the child that must be kept within this near impossible to imagine as a singular place, with what I will call here as ‘the event’ in which such free play is, according to Derrida, to be lost. The narrator speaks as if without this addition in our knowledge of Omelas, no place is likely to be believed, indicated just before the horrid description of the child and the way it is made to live, “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.”

Other stories have made similar moves in the struggles between either classes as in The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, with an central condition that seems so vulgar to the reader as the one of which is depended upon to maintain good fortune for the majority. It can also be found in  “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson where one person is selected at random to be stoned to death by the other residence of the town for reasons that are at this point unknown, either as blind tradition or speculation to somehow affect the bounty of a future crop (What is the purpose of the lottery in the village?). In all three of these stories, the singular point of conflict is in the paradox to what cannot be believed in, without it. These stories may indicate an acceptance that we have of the conflicts outside them around the world. They may imply that we are living in an illusion of peace or perceived stability by our own dismissal of misery or acceptance of war. These stories may represent the present day class struggles.  One example of this struggle being that the United States consumes and enjoys more resources and freedoms than other parts of the world, and because it does so, those parts must and will continue to suffer. These questions and possibilities may continue to remain open ended as it is for the ones who remain in Omelas or in the reason behind the continuation of the barbaric yet organized ritual in “The Lottery.” The conflicts we find in the world, also made by fictitious comparison, that spill into other parts of the world as it does in The Hunger Games, can be seen by the refugees that flood from Syria into nations around the globe or the eruption of violence in areas plagued by drought and the capitalization of resources that some people are beginning to call the start of the ‘Water Wars.’

In the cases of these stories it is the suffering of few versus the many that is initially presented as the ‘ideal’ trade off to peace. The work and sacrifice of some to uphold the status and wellbeing of others is a theme in each story. It is in nearly every case regarded as necessary for whatever reason. Again the narrator illustrates this when they say, “They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science.”

As Martin Luther King Jr. states in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere...Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (Ali-Dinar). If we go back to those that decide to walk away, it can be said that this truth of Omelas sets them to find another truth. The evidence is in, “the place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness...It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going.” Perhaps the center of this act may be the guilt which the narrator claimed, “there is none of in Omelas” early in its description. Later, we can follow the indication of more hypocrisy of such a concept when the narrator stresses that, “to exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement; to throw away the happiness of thousand for the chance of the happiness of one; that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.” To some it may be considered that sickness, that cancer, present in all of our minds and our imperfect creations, our superstructures formed by a base that defines us both inside and out, to a some degree mirrored in this story, in the answer those that leave Omelas seem to reject, when the conclusion of the story implies that they question or in action, answer, the life they once enjoyed. It is after the discovery not all, within Omelas, are able to enjoy the same happiness or perhaps that they can not to continue to see happiness the same again because of that reality that we can conclude.

In this most simplest of terms the arguments here can be boiled down to a single line within the story, one that the narrator themselves stressed a repeating to the significance found within it and I would continue to argue to the world outside of these fictions--“They were not less complex than us.” It is nature of the intentional irony of this story, that those would seek happiness after having thought, at least at one point, to know what that truly means, that a place so perfect if given the liberty and free play of thought to be seen as such, could contain a core condition so much in contrast to it, and that the limitation of all of this both inside and out is still, unquestionably, dependent solely on the limitation of one.

 

Work Cited

Ali-Dinar, Ali B. Ph.D. Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.], African Studies Center-University of Pennsylvania. africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html. April 23, 2017

 

Le Guin, Ursula. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Feb 9, 2016

 

"What is the purpose of the lottery in the village? Why do people continue to participate?   " eNotes, 7 Sep. 2016, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-purpose-lottery-village-why-people-continue-768573. Accessed 24 Apr. 2018.