If you mean that the story was constructed to cause the reader some cognitive discomfort, I wouldn't be entirely shocked if LeGuin would have agreed with you and said she intended it. (Pain, I'm not sure she quite would have intended.) I find myself okay with having undergone that level of discomfort as the reader.
...I think the question is not so much "what would you do?" as "What are you doing?"
Agreed. To me, one thing making the story valuable is the extremes it depicts. I see the situation, I recognize that the ones who walk away are giving something up (perhaps with a very real sense of loss? or perhaps with disgust? the author doesn't say), and I am led to ask myself what I am willing to give up, and when, and why. Also important is what I am not willing to give up and why.
Reading in a "What would you do?" way reminds me of the typical use of the story set called the trolley problem as an apparatus for defining ethics. I am considerably influence by "The Good Place," in which it is concluded after a series of visceral examinations of the problem that the ethical fault is in setting the situation.
I haven't seen (? read?) "The Good Place", but I enjoy reading that conclusion. I'm reminded of a cartoon I cannot now find, which had some nonhuman (the trolley? an alien?) saying "We thought you people enjoyed doing this sort of thing, you talk about it so much."
But I myself want to read the story as an indictment of a society like ours (but better) and of the inevitable inadequacy of my efforts to spread the glory and reduce the pain.
Same. And, because I'm just not a very advanced soul, I guess, I also kind of want to read it as an indictment of people who don't care to lift a finger to change anything or help anyone.
no subject
...I think the question is not so much "what would you do?" as "What are you doing?"
Agreed. To me, one thing making the story valuable is the extremes it depicts. I see the situation, I recognize that the ones who walk away are giving something up (perhaps with a very real sense of loss? or perhaps with disgust? the author doesn't say), and I am led to ask myself what I am willing to give up, and when, and why. Also important is what I am not willing to give up and why.
Reading in a "What would you do?" way reminds me of the typical use of the story set called the trolley problem as an apparatus for defining ethics. I am considerably influence by "The Good Place," in which it is concluded after a series of visceral examinations of the problem that the ethical fault is in setting the situation.
I haven't seen (? read?) "The Good Place", but I enjoy reading that conclusion. I'm reminded of a cartoon I cannot now find, which had some nonhuman (the trolley? an alien?) saying "We thought you people enjoyed doing this sort of thing, you talk about it so much."
But I myself want to read the story as an indictment of a society like ours (but better) and of the inevitable inadequacy of my efforts to spread the glory and reduce the pain.
Same. And, because I'm just not a very advanced soul, I guess, I also kind of want to read it as an indictment of people who don't care to lift a finger to change anything or help anyone.