Sure, the Omelas dilemma is tough, but at least we have our narrator as ally, right? Right? Perhaps the real horror in Omelas has less to do with the child at its center.

Is this story really about that suffering child? Or is it more about how we wall its suffering out, then invite it back in?

At last we settle in to think about Le Guin's Omelas story and set aside some common approaches to it. The first of several parts.

Let's niche down into a small sub-genre of fantasy and explore our desire for it, the classic utopia!

Riddle: What do Beowulf, Palmolive dish liquid, and Sarah Maas have in common? Hint: Ursula K. Le Guin knows!

What do a children's story and horror film have in common? Maybe our Suffering Child question, with very different approaches to it.

This is getting challenging. What are we to do with the Suffering Child question? And on which form of suffering do I plant my flag of resistance? Dostoevsky and Langston Hughes both offer clues.

Still another famous writer has posed the Le Guin question, and he did it in one of Russia's most famous novels, The Brothers Karamazov. Here it is.

Le Guin leans on an essay by William James, but what does that have to do with all our garden talk? It's about our blind spots and our privilege.

Speaking of links back to Andrew Marvell's poetry--weren't we?--we expose some of our misapprehensions about nature, leisure, and work. And we read Marvell's poem "The Garden" while we think green thoughts about it.