Who are the people who walk away from Omelas? What do you think of their departure?
How is ‘happiness’ described in Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story — ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’?
What connections do you see between the short story and the idea of ‘happiness’ in the chapter from Sara Ahmed’s book?
Who are the people who walk away from Omelas? What do you think of their departure?
(min 350 words) To help you think about this question, I am including a quote from Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness about the freedom to be unhappy: “
The political will to be affected by unhappiness could be rewritten as a political freedom.
We would radicalize freedom as the freedom to be unhappy. The freedom to be unhappy is not about being wretched or sad, although it might involve freedom to express such feelings.
The freedom to be unhappy would be the freedom to be affected by what is unhappy, and to live a life that might affect others unhappily. The freedom to be unhappy would be the freedom to live a life that deviates from the paths of happiness, wherever that deviation takes us. It would thus mean the freedom to cause unhappiness by acts of deviation.”