Small review of essays.

With as much detail that fills the first paragraph of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" it's hard to remember that it's a "science fiction" essay. It also didn't help that less than a week prior Dr. Phil had an entire show dedicated to publicizing the abuse of a child in an exact same situation that was far from fiction. Her mother and step-father had locked her in a closet from age two until eight, while they used her as an "inanimate" sex object for their perverted desires. It was a horrible hour of my life that I could not help but watch in horror and disbelief. Those same feelings erupted as I hit the very beginning of paragraph five.
The writing is obviously pathetic by drawing on our emotions in a very bold way. She is not sneaky about it in that she begins with all the bliss and joy in the beginning and all through the way is asking if we believe the "joy." She is steady hinting that all is not well in paradise. She also changes her tense in the third paragraph and allows us to make our own details as if it was the present, and we were there. Then the mention of a basement, a locked door, no windows, and it becomes clear that the emotional roller coaster has reached the top of the hill. The coaster just crests the apex of the hill as we read, "In the room a child is sitting." and the plummet begins.
It doesn't seem fair to elicit these emotions and this rage on a work of fiction, but by not providing detail about the location (although it mentions the "thirteen peaks" in the view and they are located in Taiwan) the reader can imagine that it can be anywhere. Fortunately with my timing on the read I was given a real world example in our own country and thus the feelings are fair and the story is not entirely a fiction, only the location.

Austin F