The Joy of Text: Reading as Recreation

Like any good literary text, the word recreation can have many meanings. This paper is concerned with three of those meanings. First, recreation is just plain fun, an “activity that amuses or entertains;” it is also a measure of leisure and escape, “freedom from labor, responsibility” (American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition). However, the word also carries another important meaning, that of re-creation, which I use to refer to the re-creative activity of reading. In exploring reading as recreation, I’m interested in what makes the reading of literature intrinsically valuable and necessary: the fact that it can be enjoyable, creative and educational, in a very specific sense.

A common misconception about literature is that it’s “merely” enjoyable, an escape (as opposed to a “productive” activity). This fallacy has spawned many of the stereotypes that afflict those of us who study and teach literature. It is ironic that, in an entertainment-obsessed culture, the “fun-value” of literature is not enough to validate its intrinsic value. In my most cynical moments, I believe this is simply because the potential of profiting off of literature is limited. Perhaps if “they” (our corporate sponsors?) put commercials in between chapters, books would make a comeback, and literature would once again be valuable and respectable. And now, a brief message from those sponsors (Cox Cable, 3M and Chevron): We currently have several marketing firms and focus groups engaged in researching literature’s profit potential, in order to save it, of course. Ok, now imagine a swelling sentimental soundtrack, a sepia-toned digitally softened image of an educated-looking person (complete with eyeglasses and leather patches on blazer elbows. Sorry, the pipe is no longer p.c.). This person is lovingly thumbing through an old, hardback book as a slightly gravelly but mellifluous voice-over says: “Do people really care about the spotted owl/the harp seal/great books? People do.” Please trust that we are hard at work on this issue. In the meantime, continue to watch television and consume heavily, like good little Americans. Thank you.

Yes, written narratives can provide enjoyment, and partly in an escapist sense. However, this idea need not be negative. I never thought I would be arguing for escapism (again, in our escapist culture), but my ideas on the meaning of “escape” have been modified. Escape need not be limited to its modern connotation: a flight from responsibility or thought. In fact, the word carries some very positive (and relevant) denotations: “To break loose from confinement; get free…to avoid capture, danger, or harm…to grow beyond a cultivated area.”  (American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition)

The escape of recreation can be a productive vacation from the relentless pressures, confinements and even cultivations of being. As Jerry Farber argues, the “esthetic release” offered by any form of art can be a mini psychological vacation—a trip to the mind spa for a mud bath and a rubdown—that leaves us better able to cope with “reality.” “When [the esthetic release] is most nearly complete, we seem to merge with what we are perceiving: the sky, the novel, the song; all responsibility for self seems to have vanished” (18). And unlike other “extractive” forms of reading (a newspaper, for instance), in reading literature, our constant striving stops. (Farber 20) Because of the temporary disengagement of our personal needs and goals,… the perception becomes an end in itself” (Farber 20). And we get a break.

We should not underestimate the value of a brief (healthy) hiatus from self-concern. As Farber notes, the need for a break from self-concern is so strong (especially, I think, in such a fragmented, stressful and noisy world) that we seek to escape it in many unhealthy ways. Most of the unhealthy escape routes, such as televised sporting events, alcohol and drugs, don’t just diminish self-concern, but “our ability to respond to anything, even art” (Farber 21).

While textual narratives can be highly habit-forming (especially if you get the really good stuff), they certainly do not lead to intellectual numbness. In fact, there are no known physical side effects, and literature has yet to be proven harmful to pregnant women. Although, as noted by the surgeon general, it is perhaps less than prudent to operate heavy machinery while under the influence of a really good novel. The sponsors would like me to remind you to never, never read and drive. Thank you.

Wolfgang Iser also addresses the escape offered by literature. He describes “the temporary self-alienation that occurs to the reader when his consciousness brings to life the ideas formulated by the author” (Implied 66). Once the reader is “entangled” in the text, her own preconceptions continually lose ground to the text (part of the loss of self-concern). The text becomes her “present,” and her own ideas “fade into the past.” When this occurs, the reader is open to “the immediate experience of the text, which was impossible so long as [her] preconceptions were [her] ‘present’” (Implied 64). Iser claims this mini-vacation from selfhood is more than just pleasurable, but essential to the formation of the text’s illusion (which is in turn, central to other important benefits of reading). Interestingly, the illusion offered by the literary text is dependent on, and may actually be even more beneficial than the escape it offers.

Now, you may be thinking that this might be a good time to flex our ideologies, make a few value judgements, and decide on what kind of literature would constitute a negative escape, in which case, I’d vote for Danielle Steele and John Grisham, among others. But then we’d have to discuss whether or not they constitute “literature,” which would, no doubt, lead us into a heated debate over what literature actually is, which…I’m sorry, but I’ve just been advised by our sponsors that we do not have time to address these issues here. Thank you.

Let’s see, we were discussing an escape that leads to illusion. That doesn’t sound too positive, does it? (The sponsors are eyeing me nervously again.) Once again, an important distinction lies in the way we define our terms. According to Iser, illusion is a “fixed or definable outline” taken on by the “gestalt” of a text, and is essential to our understanding of that text. (Implied 59) While he recognizes that “an overdose of illusion may lead to triviality,” he claims it is still necessary. If we couldn’t find or impose the consistency on a literary text that creates its illusion, we would simply stop reading. The text’s illusion makes the experience it offers more accessible; it makes it “readable” (Implied 59). And although it’s only a a transitory state, illusion is necessary to “understanding of an unfamiliar experience”(Implied 61). In order to process something well, must be able to imagine it (which explains the importance of framing, metaphor and the use of examples even in expository writing, and of course, in teaching).

This illusion-building process creates a space in which several phenomena can occur. As the reader builds a text’s illusions and alternates between involvement in and observation of them, she:

“opens [herself] up to the unfamiliar world without being imprisoned in it. Through this process, the reader moves into the presence of the fictional world and so experiences the realities of the text as they happen” (Implied 61).

Having left our self-involvement temporarily behind, we begin to create in our minds the illusion suggested by the text, if consistency is not obvious, we attempt to create it and apply it to the text. This all points to the fact that the writing of a text is by no means the last creative act on the chain. Embedded in the act of reading a narrative, is an act of creation: re-creation.

Unlike most other forms of escape (aesthetic or otherwise), reading is creative. The reader does not just passively absorb a text, like she could a piece of music, a painting, a movie, a glass of wine, a quaalude. And, although many of these would probably evoke some activity of the imagination, not nearly as consistently and effectively as in the reading of a narrative. Interestingly, opportunities for re-creative activity are limited in many other forms of art, like music and the visual arts, where most of “the gestalt” is provided. You could stare at the elaborate walls of the Sistine Chapel for years and not achieve the exact sort of mental activity and pleasure offered by one of Matisse’s five-line, black and white sketches. And yet, a text provides even less visual information than a sketch.

There are also important difference between other forms of narrative, like film, and the literary text: in the text, few or no images are provided for us—we must imagine, literally make images—a process that makes the experience special. “With the novel the reader must use his imagination to synthesize the info given him, and so his perception is simultaneously richer and more private…” (Iser,Implied 57) If one can see something, one cannot imagine it. As Iser puts it, It is precisely the “elements of indeterminacy,” the pregnant lack in a text that enable us to picture things, to re-create. Without this negative space left open, like a blank canvas, “we should not be able to use our imagination” (Implied 57).

The benefits of this recreative activity range further than mere mental exercise. Once we put ourselves, our ideas, our “striving” aside, we don’t just get a break, we don’t just get to form images—something new becomes possible—we are able to learn. As Iser points out, “reading reflects the process by which we gain experience” (Implied 65). In order to learn, we must make room for new ideas. When we read, “we must suspend the ideas and attitudes that shape our personalities before we can experience the unfamiliar world of the literary text”(65). During this process, Iser says, something happens to us, much more than mere “identification” with the text. Iser points out that our little vacations from ourselves can remove certain barriers to learning. The removal of the “subject-object division that otherwise is a prerequisite for all knowledge and all observation, and the removal of this decision puts reading in an apparently unique position as regards the possible absorption of new experiences” (Iser, Implied 66). In becoming involved and invested in a text, in participating in the act of recreation, we “‘other’ the text less, are more likely to learn, be swayed, at least momentarily” (Iser, Implied 66). (There’s an interesting resonance here to Robert Scholes’ concepts of narrativity and surrender/recovery.) In an early effort to refute fallacies regarding fiction as an unproductive, escapist pleasure, D.W. Harding had this to say: “It seems nearer the truth…to say that fictions contribute to defining the reader’s or spectator’s values, and perhaps stimulating his desires, rather than to suppose that they gratify desire by some mechanism of vicarious experience” (qtd in Iser, Implied 67). Reading is an active process, whose dynamism can lead to intellectual growth.

Now we are talking about an escape that leads to illusion which can lead to growth, development. (The sponsors are smiling and nodding, relieved to finally hear an unambiguously positive concept.) This positive aspect of the escape offered by a literary text is twofold. The text begins to serve as both a parallel (a mirror that reflects experiences, dispositions similar to the reader’s) and a contrast. In this paradoxical situation, the reader is “forced to reveal aspects of himself in order to experience a reality which is different from his own” (Iser, Implied 57). The impact on the reader depends on the reader’s level of active participation—in providing unwritten parts of text, “in supplying all the missing links, he must think in terms of experiences different from his own; indeed, it is only by leaving behind the familiar world of his own experience that the reader can truly participate in the adventure the literary text offers him” (Iser, Implied 57). Reading’s similarity to the process by which we gain experience leads to the same possibility of broadened horizons, and improved thinking—not just idealistically, but psychologically, and even physiologically:

“In the act of reading, having to think of something that we have not yet experienced does not mean only being in a position to conceive or even understand it; it also means that such acts of conception are possible and even successful to the degree that they lead to something being formulated in us. For someone else’s thoughts can only take a form in our consciousness if, in the process, our unformulated faculty for deciphering these thoughts is brought into play—a faculty which, in the act of deciphering, also formulates itself.” (Iser, Implied  67-68, my emphasis)

Like any new thought, attempting to conceive of and understand unfamiliar ideas forges new neural pathways, developing and strengthening that all-important muscle, the brain. This mental work out can potentially improve our conceptual and critical abilities. So, we see that the two recreative processes we’ve discussed can lead to a third recreative process. As we read, we have the opportunity to grow and change, or re-create ourselves.

While the literary narrative allows new ideas in, it also helps us to examine our old ones. When texts present us with negative space, gaps to fill, the object, says Iser, is to “make us aware of the nature of our own capacity for providing links. In such cases, the text refers back directly to our own preconceptions—which are revealed by the act of interpretation that is a basic element of the reading process.” (Implied, 55). In the process of absorbing a narrative and forming its illusion in our minds, we are offered a glimpse of our own preconceptions, specifically, opinions or conceptions that were “formed in advance of full or adequate knowledge or experience,” our prejudices or biases (American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition).

Not only can the process of reading result in growth, it can also lead to self-discovery. As Iser argues, in presenting a “need to decipher,” the text also lets us formulate our own capacity to decipher: “we bring to the fore an element of our being of which we are not directly conscious…it also entails the possibility that we may formulate ourselves and so discover what had previously seemed to elude our consciousness.” (Implied 68, my emphasis) The development made possible by literature’s recreative activity can lead to self formulation and self knowledge. (The sponsors are shrugging. They are unsure of the value of that last one, but are willing to accept it.)

In the reading of a literary text, the reader’s capacity to absorb new experiences, to examine preconceptions and to decipher meaning are reinforced, strengthened. Horizons are expanded, the intellect is exercised and developed, and self examination and knowledge are encouraged. This is a more concrete and less idealistic version of the New Critical idea of Literature making a reader a “better person.” Who knows how the reader’s ethics may be affected, she may not become a “better person”—kinder, more honest and responsible—but the reading of literature will almost surely make her a better thinker.

Perhaps it’s time for a disclaimer: the reading of literature is not totally without risk. There are potential psychological side-effects. Consumption of literary texts can lead to increased mental activity, unfamiliar thought patterns and a marked desire to discuss what you’ve read. Be warned: this can be a problem in some social circles. Friends don’t often let friends ramble on about Dostoevsky. Keep this in mind and consume wisely and safely. In fact, due to issues of liability, the sponsors have asked me to ask you not to continue reading this paper unless you are over 18 or have parental approval and/or supervision. Thank you.

…

Since the advent of the modern world there has been a clearly discernible tendency toward privileging the performative aspect of the author-text-reader relationship, whereby the pre-given is no longer viewed as an object of representation but rather as material from which something new is fashioned.”
(Iser, Prospecting 249)

Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” embodies many of these recreative activities in a very direct way. Using a narrator who actively manipulates and controls the reader’s experience, Le Guin plays with her readers, emphasizing the “performative aspect” of a very interesting “author-text-reader relationship.” The results of this game are, I believe, heightened activity and involvement by the reader (re-creation), which leads to heightened pleasure in reading (recreation), and potentially to more dramatic self-questioning and possible development by the reader (the re-creation of oneself).

Le Guin’s story begins as a conventional narrative, diving right in to the creation of the illusion. “With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea” (Cassill, 967). This sentence is typical of the first paragraph’s densely image-packed, highly descriptive, almost cinematic language. In less than 30 lines, Le Guin establishes a mythical society called Omelas. Like a fairy tale, Omelas is a bit generic—important elements are described, but not in too much detail—allowing the reader to make the society her own (fill the gaps), becoming instantly involved in recreation. As we find it, Omelas is happiness incarnate, with the Festival of Summer about to begin (can you think of a better time/reason to have a festival?). There is mass merriment of various kinds—something for everyone. There is music, dancing, flapping banners, a race about to begin, many clanging bells, and joy all around. Le Guin starts the reader off on a run, situating her in the middle of an ultra-happy fairy tale/fantasy setting.

Interestingly, this setting is one that would be at least familiar, if not nostalgically beloved to most people in our culture. Not accidentally, she creates a familiar and ideal situation, with which she seduces the reader. And despite being an expert science fiction and futuristic world-builder, Le Guin doesn’t choose an alien world to get this message across, but a very familiar one, one dear to most of our ideologies, and one which sets up some rather specific expectations.

In the first paragraph, the reader is immediately active, recreating. With the author’s prompting, we are off and running, each imagining our own Omelas. I believe this is a pleasurable activity to most of us—although to different degrees. Being an idealist and a lover of fairy-tales, I was only too willing to chuck my disbelief out the nearest window and plunge, head first, into the narrative. Omelas came alive in my head. (Which, i believe, lead directly to how strongly the story affected me later.) However, I know of other readers who, being a bit more cynical or less fond of the familiar setting, moved into the story more carefully, even a bit suspiciously. Was the pleasure of their “esthetic experience” lessened by their skepticism? Perhaps, because skepticism (being a sort of protection against deflated expectations) would certainly influence the way their expectations are later shattered, which Iser believes is so important.

According to Iser, the esthetic experience made possible by the literary text is the result of a balancing operation performed by the reader (between observation of and involvement in illusion, and between establishing and disrupting consistency). (Implied, 61) If the balancing act stops, recreative activity stops, the fun stops. “The inherent nonachievement of balance is a prerequisite for the very dynamism of the operation. In seeking the balance, we inevitably have to start out with certain expectations, the shattering of which is integral to the esthetic experience” (Implied, 61).

Le Guin actively seeks to manipulate the reader’s fluctuation between observation of and involvement in illusion, which directly affects the reader’s experience of the text. In “Omelas,” after a paragraph of straight narrative, suddenly a voice breaks in, vaguely addressing the reader, beginning a sort of dialogue that will grow stronger. “How is one to tell about the joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?” (Cassill, 968) Le Guin has just given us a very vivid description of joy, so what is the purpose of this question? It does not enhance our illusion—the images she has carefully planted in our minds—but actually disrupts it. She goes on to describe the Omelasians and their culture, in a more matter-of-fact way, “They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer anymore” (Cassill 968, my emphasis). Here, she begins to address reader directly, with “you see” and then positions herself with that reader (“we”), in contrast to Omelas.

Not only has Le Guin halted the narrative, disrupting our illusion building by addressing us directly, but her intrusion into the narrative forces us out of our involvement in the illusion and into the observation of the illusion and our involvement in it. She has also begun to position us in relation to the Omelasians, a strategy that links us to the story even more firmly. She continues both of these strategies throughout the third paragraph, in which she gets the reader very involved in describing specific social elements of Omelas.

Here, again, Le Guin begins subtly. The narrator first admits a kind of ignorance about her narrative: ”I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few” (968). She begins to lure us into a more active re-creation by suggesting or offering opinions about how Omelas is——which is, of course, entirely under her control——as if we could change it. Eventually, she asks us directly to participate, claiming her words seem too unreal, too like a fairy tale. ”Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly, I cannot suit you all” (Cassill 968).  What follows is a sort of guided utopian brainstorming session.

We are told certain things and allowed leeway to imagine on others, “it doesn’t matter, as you like” (Cassill 969). Then Le Guin gets really playful and begins manipulating the reader’s illusion building. Addressing the reader directly once again, the narrator worries that Omelas might seem too “goody-goody,” and gives out another direct invitation to participate in the narrative. “If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don’t hesitate” (Cassill 969).

These ongoing invitations to participate and add to the narrative play with the subject-object division of which Iser speaks, manipulating our oscillation between involvement in (re-creation) and observation of the illusion. These games also keep any balance between the two poles at bay, which, according to Iser, retains the dynamism of the esthetic experience. Meanwhile, the idea (or “illusion”?) that we are helping to build Omelas (by being free to formulate some of its elements) involves us more deeply in the formation of the illusion.

At the same time, Le Guin is continually raising and shattering expectations. Ranging from the first paragraph’s implied fairy tale/ utopian expectations (which are later devastated by the Omelasians’ dark secret), to some much more overtly raised and debunked expectations. As early as the second paragraph, Le Guin starts to anticipate, encourage and manipulate our expectations. She openly discusses what we would expect, based on the type of narrative she’s created: “Given a description such as this, one tends to make certain assumptions… one tends to look next for the king…” (Cassill 968). This, of course, is an invitation to imagine/expect a king. This expectation however, is quickly frustrated as the narrator abruptly takes over again: “But there was no king” (Cassill 968).

In her discussion of Omelasian sexuality, Le Guin really toys with the reader’s expectations. We’ve been invited to add an orgy, if we feel Omelas needs it. Le Guin then takes it upon herself to direct the reader’s imagined orgy:

“Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstacy and ready to copulate with anyone, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood…” (Cassill 969)

In asking us not to create this scene, she creates it, and we see it. Is she playing with us? Just when we think maybe she’s worried about the morality or explicit sexuality of that image, she reverses that assumption with the rest of the sentence: “although that was my first idea” (Cassill 969). She then explains that it’s the clergy, not the copulation that bothers her. Displaying the very opposite of our possible assumption, she proposes that the nudes should be wandering about, “offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of needy and the rapture of the flesh” (Cassill 969). She proceeds to celebrate the copulation. This is typical of the story’s twists and turns and of Le Guin’s slightly perverse humor. She seems to enjoy dabbling with our expectations—luring us into a belief, an assumption and then pulling what we thought was the rug out from under us. It should be noted that, like her story, Le Guin’s playfulness is not without a serious social conscience. She includes what she calls “a not unimportant point:” that the children of these rituals be “beloved and looked after by all…” (Cassill 969). (This is perhaps the least believable aspect of her fantastic story—that a society could exist entirely without sexual stigmas.)

In the fourth and fifth paragraphs, Le Guin returns to uninterrupted narrative. Here, I believe she is reinforcing the illusion of Omelas, which was undermined by the narrator’s rather impertinent, if useful presence. Like the opening paragraph, these are rich in description and lack the direct presence of the narrator. These paragraphs also pick up threads from the first one. Le Guin once again illustrates the joy present in Omelas, she continues to describe the race—the impatience of horses and riders who begin to line up at starting line, the crowds who are assembled to watch… With these descriptions, the reader’s anticipation mounts, and seems due to climax when the race begins. But the race never begins. Instead of the starting pistol, the narrative halts again, with a jolt. At this point, the reader may well be frustrated, intrigued or both. Either way, she is involved, and in no way prepared for what comes next. Le Guin lures us into a fairy tale, invites us participate and then draws us into a nightmare.

Again, Le Guin pushes us abruptly out of illusion formation and into observation, calling attention to the illusion itself. “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing” (Cassill 970). This query (both a rhetorical question and a rhetorical device) is posed directly to the reader. Of course, it is the narrator who finally answers it.

Why this bumpy ride? According to Iser, it’s simply more effective. “The act of recreation is not a smooth or continuous process, but one which, in its essence, relies on interruptions of the flow to render it efficacious” (Implied 62). Le Guin consciously constantly interrupts and guides the narrative. This forces the reader to review and revise the illusion she is building, the expectations with which it is formulated, and the preconceptions upon which it is based. Depending on the reader, this process can be frustrating or fun, but it generally leads to greater involvement with the text, simply because it is unexpected and leads to increased interpretive activity on the part of the reader.

Now, Le Guin introduces Omelas’ dark secret, its raison d’être hereux. Nothing we have read has really prepared us for the lonely, malnourished child locked in the tool room. But perhaps it is our utter surprise, coupled with our extra ordinary investment in the illusion of Omelas that makes this development more disturbing and poignant. The readers of this story are not unlike the children of Omelas—blindly enjoying everything, until they learn the secret…or maybe the cynics among us were waiting for something like this? Either way, to different extents, the readers have played an active role in the creation of this suddenly suspect utopia, which makes for stronger feelings when things become complex.

These strategies increase the recreative activity offered by the text and greatly enhance the re-creative experience, in its three forms, because, as Iser writes, “it is only by activating the reader’s imagination that the author can hope to involve him and so realize the intentions of his text” (Implied 57). It was Le Guin’s intention to arouse ambiguous feelings, to have the reader want to believe in Omelas (perhaps even feel like part of it) and desire its happiness, in order to be more devastated by what makes it possible. In the introduction added to the story when it was collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Le Guin says the story was inspired by the following passage from “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” by William James:

[I]f the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier’s and Bellamy’s and Morris’s utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specific and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though the impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?”
(Le Guin, Quarters 275)

The story is organized to make us not just think about, but feel the conflict of “clutching at the happiness offered” and knowing how hideous it would be to enjoy it, to benefit from such a “bargain.”
Le guin then writes, “The dilemma of the American conscience can hardly be better stated.” (Winds, 275) “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is meant to be a mirror not just of society in the abstract, but of us.

In another way, Le Guin is actually “playing” with us. In Prospecting, Iser applies strategies of game playing to the literary text. One of those strategies is mimicry, “a play designed to generate illusion. Whatever is denoted by the signifier or foreshadowed by the schemata should be taken as if it were what it says” (256). Iser goes on to explain two reasons for this. First of all, “the more perfect the illusion, the more real will seem the world it depicts” (256). “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” first presents a very effective and persuasive illusion. This draws the reader in and involves her in the text, while raising both minor and major expectations that will later be exploded. Second, “If the illusion…is punctured and so revealed as what it is, the world it depicts turns into a looking glass enabling the referential world outside the text to be observed” (256). Omelas becomes a socially-conscious mirror image of America in several ways. Le Guin’s interruption of the narrative punctures the illusion, creating a juxtaposition of the illusion of Omelas with its status as a literary construct. The narrator’s positioning of herself with “us” in contrast to Omelas, reinforces the referential aspect of the illusion.

In order to get a very serious message across, Le Guin chooses a playful approach over a didactic one. This was an intelligent and practical choice. These sophisticated games are by no means prerequisites to social commentary, but it takes skill to criticize a reader’s accepted beliefs, while keeping her not only vulnerable and open-minded, but actually invested in the vehicle of the criticism. A narrative can blend a social message with recreation, in its many forms, making the message both more poignant and more palatable. But, as Iser argues, the literary text must do this very delicately:

“Strangely enough, we feel that any confirmative effect—such as we implicitly demand of expository texts, as we refer to the objects they are meant to present—is a defect in a literary text. For the more a text individualizes or confirms an expectation it has initially aroused, the more aware we become of its didactic purpose, so that at best we can only accept or reject the thesis forced upon us. More often than not, the very clarity of such texts will make us want to free ourselves from their clutches.” (Implied 53)

The carefully-crafted illusion and expectation games in “Omelas”  keep our involvement high, our defenses down, and our preconceptions aside—thus clearing a path for a disturbing message to enter and perhaps occasion the third, and perhaps most important kind of re-creation with which we are concerned: self questioning, self knowledge, self re-creation:

“The efficacy of a literary text is brought about by the apparent evocation and subsequent negation of the familiar. What at first seemed to be an affirmation of our assumptions leads to our own rejection of them, thus tending to prepare us for a re-orientation. And it is only when we have outstripped our preconceptions and left the shelter of the familiar that we are in a position to gather new experiences” (Implied, 64).

Once we have given in to and participated in the building the illusion of Omelas, we are sudenly alone and vulnerable in a new, dark Omelas. We have been stripped of our assumptions. Our expectations have been demolished (and so made visible, and opened to critique). Our preconceptions no longer ring true. We have been prepared for a “re-orientation.”

In that uncomfortable, vulnerable moment, change is possible. We may look at ourselves and the lives we take for granted and begin to think about them differently (I know I did after studying this story), perhaps beginning to fashion our own values instead of merely accepting popular ones. “Omelas” is a wonderful example of how literary texts provide a means and a forum to stimulate, enhance and shelter this most important of recreative activities.

It seems that only in the presence of uncertainty are we really able to evolve, to grow. Ironically, this recreative pattern has long resided in one of our oldest narrative genres—the fairy tale. In a story that is said to explain “the necessity of an individual morality” (Contemporary Authors, 269), it seems fitting that, like the fairy tale hero, the ones who choose to walk away from the beautiful but flawed perfection of Omelas must leave the familiar and comfortable and venture into the unknown to find the only reward greater than “happiness”—themselves.

Françoise Lemieux
11 December, 1998