Schoolmaster Daru of Albert Camus\'

¶ … schoolmaster Daru of Albert Camus' short story "The Guest" is a solitary man living alone in a harsh environment, in a very humble shelter, subsisting on rough food. Yet Daru is proud of his independence and seems to enjoy his social isolation and the freedom it gives him. Daru does not hate people: he is compassionate to his students, and gives out his meager provisions to those who are hungry. But he prefers to live isolated from society and social dictates. The story is set in colonial Algiers, where the native populace is fighting for its freedom, against the French ruling powers, but Daru seems to be above the obligations and fray of politics.

Society intrudes upon Daru's life when a soldier tries to compel him to take an Arab prisoner to the authorities, a dictate that Daru resists. Daru does not want to judge the guilt of any individual, nor does he want to be judged. When the soldier leaves, the grateful Arab at first thinks that Daru is aligned with his cause. Yet Daru does not emotionally believe in the cause of either the French or the Algerians. He simply wants to be left alone, to be free.

Camus ends the story with a seeming paradox -- Daru lets the Arab prisoner free, to wander off on his own. But when given a choice, the Arab heads for the town, where he will be tried and likely convicted. He refuses to flee to the nomadic wilderness and leave his people. This illustrates that most people, when given a choice, resist the terrors of absolute freedom. They are afraid of liberty and giving up their social role, even when society may destroy them. Camus believes that people must embrace freedom, with all of its difficulties; otherwise all people are likely to be forever imprisoned and lose the individuality that makes them uniquely human.

Question 2

Do we already live in Omelas? In her short story, "The ones who walk away from Omelas," the science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin portrays a utopian society that is perfect in almost every way, except for the fact that one child must suffer so that the rest of humanity can be prosperous, productive, and happy. Omelas seems like an illustration of the classic utopian paradox. Is it acceptable, Le Guin asks, that an injustice is done to support the greatest good being done for the greatest number of people? Because of our belief in individualism, as a society, the bargain Omelas has made seems unacceptable. But it is also possible to suggest that we have already made such a bargain within our own society, even if the benefits we enjoy are not as great as the residents of Omelas.

We in America, we in the developed world, live in a society with great inequities: investment bankers make six-figure salaries while children in the inner city often have an inadequate education, and live on food stamps. We accept these injustices because in theory the poor and the suffering can better themselves through hard work, due to the nature of the capitalist system. We try to rectify these injustices to some degree through social support safety nets: yet for many individuals, there is too much to overcome, too many obstacles placed in their way even before they are born.

On a macro level, the developing world often profits off of the developed world: the developed world uses products made in sweatshops, casually spends dollars at the mall, when those same pennies could buy a starving child food. This raises the question: if Omelas was destroyed, and the child was saved, would a civilization such as our own arise in its place, with many other starving children? As much as the utilitarian questions it provokes, "The ones who walk away from Omelas," also says a great deal about human nature -- we are horrified by injustice when it is embodied in a single, innocent individual, but not in the abstract. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, many people watching TV were dumbstruck by the images of extreme poverty and deprivation exposed in the coverage of the tragedy. They could not believe that people still lived in shacks, without access to transportation, in contemporary America. Yet people had done so for many decades, unbeknownst to the majority of our own population.