MasterOfNap

MasterOfNap t1_j45845p wrote

Reply to comment by icarusrising9 in "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Leguin affected me like few books have done by feanor_imc

It’s not even hypothetical, Ivan said it was a “real life” example that happened in Russia, not a thought experiment he made up to challenge Alyosha.

Anyhow, yes The Dispossessed is sort of a continuation of that question, and it’s honestly one of the best sci-fi there is too.

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MasterOfNap t1_j457liz wrote

Reply to comment by owensum in "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Leguin affected me like few books have done by feanor_imc

While TBK did explore whether the sacrifice of Jesus can justify salvation for all, the torture of that kid in Omelas would more closely mirror the torture of innocent children in Ivan’s examples in TBK.

Ivan Karamazov quite clearly thought that paradise and the entirety of knowledge are not worth the tears of a single innocent child, and that’s exactly what Le Guin was discussing - not a single willing participant to be sacrificed, but a child who doesn’t even understand why he’s suffering.

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MasterOfNap t1_ito4c6k wrote

Reply to comment by mynyddwr in "All Spaniards, we discovered, knew two English expressions. One was ‘OK, baby,’ the other was a word used by the Barcelona whores in their dealings with English sailors, and I am afraid the compositors would not print it." by SlitchBap

I’ve read Beevor’s book but I don’t recall anything suggesting he’s a Marxist, do you have any source for that?

Orwell is a first-person witness in the war, which means there’s no way he can be perfectly neutral. That doesn’t mean he’s lying in the book though, unless you have some other evidence to support otherwise.

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