11 May 2020, 1:08 pm - In Which I Look Back At Omelas

Staying home as newlyweds is like paradise. We get to spend all our time together (well, sometimes we choose to separate ourselves for the sake of sanity); we are baking bread, making good coffee, watching new shows and generally just playacting a retired couple in the midst of a pandemic. It feels like paradise, if you just ignore all of the stress and insomnia and terrible headlines popping up on our phones.

But, we cannot totally ignore real life. We can only experience our mini-paradise because of the terrible-ness that is going on outside which keeps us in our home. Like in LeGuin’s Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, we have seen the “child” - those who are forgotten, cast aside, and suffer from the cruel injustices of our system. This is especially prevalent for the “essential” workers. We cannot have all of this time to bake bread and drink wine if our grocery stores weren’t still open. The “essential worker” just so happens to also often be a minimum-wage earner, who work very public-facing jobs that take a lot of backlash from dissatisfied customers. Brownstein summed it up best when he wrote this:

“The greatest irony of the coronavirus pandemic may be that many of the American workers now considered the most essential were among those treated as the most disposable before the outbreak began.

Meatpackers, farmworkers, grocery-store cashiers, warehouse clerks, janitors, nursing-home and home-health-care aides—all of these positions offer some of the lowest pay, flimsiest benefits, and least job security of any occupation in America.”

See: Essential, and No Longer Disposable

Just like the child Le Guin’s Omelas, the essential worker is treated very poorly by the system. They’re looked at with pity; we think of them as making a sacrifice so that we don’t have to make a sacrifice. America is especially cruel to migrant workers.

“They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. “ (Le Guin, 4). I think this passage can be adapted to describe feelings towards the essential worker - we could pay them better, and treat them better, but if we did that, then we would be admitting that they’re just as equal as us, and then those profiting from their labor would no longer have power.

“Without the work that [they] do in fields, packing houses, warehouses, and processing plants all over this country, the American food system would collapse.” (Leung Coleman).

See: Essential Workers Are Being Treated As Expendable

We should treat them better. We should give them a safety net, and a livable wage. Our food system should not rest on the shoulders of the underpaid and overworked; America is suppose to be a place of dreams and freedom. Clearly, it is not that.

—

Works Cited:

Brownstein, Ronal. “Essential, and No Longer Disposable.” The Atlantic, 7 May 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/coronavirus-minimum-wage-paid-leave-biden/611281/. Accessed 11 May 2020.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. 1973.

Leung Coleman, Madeline. “Essential Workers Are Being Treated As Expendable.” The Atlantic, 23 Apr 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/farmworkers-are-being-treated-as-expendable/610288/. Accessed 11 May 2020.