I think it is such a metaphor. I also think that, in its construction, it's kind of a Torquemada product.
Here are things in the parable that I think are pretty well usurious-by-construction: (1) there is an away, though we don't know anything about it (2) we are told of the gracious productivity, egalitarianism, and multifarious resourcings and opportunities of Omelas, aside from that basement, and aside from that basement they're universal (3) while the cruelty of the basement is pervasive-- it mystically enables everything somehow-- its physical cost is numerically very much confined, though its moral cost is largely the point of the fable (4) reform is apparently not on the table
I think that LeGuin is making some valuable moral poetry here, but I think that often readings of it are typically less valuable, and so very much in the subjunctive. I think that LeGuin probably meant us to say to ourselves-- but I live in such a less imperfect world where the people and environments crucified are so much wider, and do I really want to maintain the polite convention that we are fair and free? I don't know that it's usually read that way....
no subject
Here are things in the parable that I think are pretty well usurious-by-construction:
(1) there is an away, though we don't know anything about it
(2) we are told of the gracious productivity, egalitarianism, and multifarious resourcings and opportunities of Omelas, aside from that basement, and aside from that basement they're universal
(3) while the cruelty of the basement is pervasive-- it mystically enables everything somehow-- its physical cost is numerically very much confined, though its moral cost is largely the point of the fable
(4) reform is apparently not on the table
I think that LeGuin is making some valuable moral poetry here, but I think that often readings of it are typically less valuable, and so very much in the subjunctive. I think that LeGuin probably meant us to say to ourselves-- but I live in such a less imperfect world where the people and environments crucified are so much wider, and do I really want to maintain the polite convention that we are fair and free? I don't know that it's usually read that way....