Blog #4

Personally, after reading and analyzing "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula Le Guin, I could connect to the short story on numerous levels. First, my own "suffering child" would consist of when my former middle school best friend and I got in a disagreement, where he ended up trying to diminish my credibility among my peers, teachers, and coaches. My credibility was in fact diminished among my peers and everybody agreed with his unkind, hurtful, and untrue words even if they knew he wasn't telling the truth. Nobody had stood up for me in that moment just like nobody took the action of freeing the boy suffering in Omelas. I promised myself that if I was ever a witness of anything like this situation, then I would stand up for what is right and I would make sure that the situation was handled in the most professional and socially correct way possible. However before this event, I have in fact "stayed". I saw a fight between two kids in my religion class in eighth grade and nobody, not even the teachers took action to this event. I knew that I was the only one who could take action between the two tangling on the floor, however I decided to stay back and let them take their anger out on one another. I realized that I should've taken action even though I was not extremely close with either one of the two people because one of the kids in the fight was clearly a victim and it was very tough to see the fight go down. After the event of the falling out between my former best friend and I, however, there were numerous events where I "walked away" and one that stands out in my head as a very significant one. Towards one of the last days of middle school, I had heard about one of my former friends gossiping and stating untrue facts about a friend who was very close to me. I did not want to confront that former friend because we had numerous fun times together before we drifted apart, but I knew that I had to stand up for what was right and to stay true to my promise. I called him out for what he had done in front of a large group of kids in my grade. Some viewed me as a hero, some viewed me as a zero, but in my heart I knew what I had done was the right thing and I was proud for my actions.