The document provides an overview of themes that can be derived from several short stories, including "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, and "The Thing in the Forest" by A.S. Byatt. It discusses key themes in the stories such as the scapegoat, individual rights versus the majority, good and evil, responsibility, traditions, family ties, hypocrisy, loss of innocence, and abandonment. Examples are presented from the stories to illustrate how these themes are portrayed.

1. ELEMENTS OF A
SHORT STORY:
THEME
By: Vanessa Abbott, Cody Beam, Melissa Berndt, and
Janethia Washington

2. As The Norton Introduction to Literature states “Even the most careful and
responsive readers will likely disagree about just what the theme is or how best
to start it. And each statement of a given theme will imply a slightly different view
of what matters most and why.” (Mays, 2013) The theme is the lesson or
message that the reader takes from the story and it can be the same or it can be
hugely different.

3. There are several themes evident in this
short story.
The Scapegoat
Rights of the individual vs. the majority
Good cannot exist without evil
Individual responsibility

4. The word “scapegoat” is a Biblical
term used to describe an animal,
usually a goat, who was sacrificed to
atone for the sins of a group of
people.
 The Omelas is a town that seems perfect upon first inspection.
However, we are soon invited into the dark underside of this
picturesque society. The narrator tells of a child “so thin there are no
calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn
meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a
mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.”
(LeGuin)
 All of the citizens of Omelas are aware that the child exists in this
state of misery and abuse, but they allow it to continue. This irrational
hostility towards a child who, presumably, has done no wrong is
horrific, yet no one does anything.
 As long as the child is locked up, the people of the Omelas can lock
up their guilt as well. They allow themselves to believe that the price
of their happiness is the misery of the child.

5. LeGuin’s inspiration for “The Ones Who
Walk Away From Omelas” is this quote
from William James in “The Moral
Philosopher and the Moral Life”:
[If the] utopias should all be outdone,
and millions kept happy on the one
simple condition that a certain lost soul
on the far-off edge of things should lead
a life of lonely torture, what except a
special and independent sort of emotion
can it be which would make us
immediately feel, even though an
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?
“Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all
understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the
tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the
wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the
abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their
skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable
misery.”(LeGuin)
 Another theme represented in “The Ones Who Walk Away From
Omelas” is the rights of the individual versus the rights of the
majority. The citizens of Omelas struggle with this dilemma. “To
throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of
happiness of one”(LeGuin).
 Some of the citizens rage, others cry, but most eventually come to
accept the situation and continue to lead happy lives. For the ones
who cannot accept there seems to be only one choice: to walk
away.

6.  The child in Omelas exists to remind the citizens that for their lives to
continue to be full of joy, the child must live a life of extreme suffering.
“There may not even be a kind word spoken to the child” (LeGuin).
 The child’s suffering is the only thing that allows the people of the
Omelas to fully comprehend their own true happiness. It is the
juxtaposition of the joy above and the suffering below that illustrates to
the citizens of the Omelas the extent of the wonderment of their lives.
“They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know
compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its
existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the
poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because
of the child that they are so gentle with children.” (LeGuin)

7.  The citizens of Omelas take no responsibility for the
suffering of the child. The ones who stay live in a
perfect society that tortures a child to stay that way, but
the ones who leave also allow the torture of the child to
continue.
 The people who stay eventually convince themselves
that any help given to the child would do no good. Even
the citizens who walk away do not help the child.

10. There are many themes that
can be derived from the story.
The dangers of blindly
following tradition
Family ties
Hypocrisy

11.  The story tells readers about an annual tradition practiced by villagers of an
anonymous small town, a tradition that continues even though it is barbaric and
seemingly serves no purpose in the present setting.
 Traditions will always have a place in society, even though the traditions may not
always be acceptable in the present setting. These traditions are often so deeply
rooted in a society that they can be very difficult to change.
 In the “The Lottery” the tradition appears to be eternal; no one knows when it
started, and no one can guess when it will end. The tradition is treated as though
it is a force of nature, no one can seem to imagine rebelling against it because it
has always been done that way.

12. Family plays an interesting role in this story, in which
each person in the community must draw a lottery piece
per person in each household. This act seems to be the
moment when belonging to a given family has the most
socially recognized significance.
During the lottery, the bonds of mother to child, husband
to wife, etc. become insignificant because of fear. The
family members are willing to turn on each other due to
their draw in the lottery. It seems that only after the
results of the lottery takes place, that bonds of family
and community return once again. At this point the
community and family mourn the loss of its members.
The emphasis of family and community in this story
heightens the sense of cruelty for the reader. As soon
as Tessie draws her paper, her entire family and
community turns on her.

13.  Hypocrisy gives reason for the sudden shift in opinions and
loyalties that can be tied back into the theme of family. Whole
families seemed as willing to turn on each other as Tessie
turned against hers.
 The earnestness of the townspeople is particularly frightening,
they are convinced that because they drew for it, they had just
cause to murder a member of their community.

16. Loss of innocence
Abandonment

17.  The girls, Penny and Primrose,
run from the young girl Alys into
the unknown of the forest. They
are trying to escape their own
youth and be more mature,
perhaps to combat their fear of
what is happening to them.
 Each girl lives their life trying to
come to terms with what they
witnessed in the forest that
caused them to grow up too
quickly.

18.  Penny and Primrose are sent away from their families without being
given any reason. They are afraid of everything even suffering
“suffocating anxiety about what would happen if they wanted to pee in
the middle of the night” (Byatt).
 The reason the girls were so quick to form such a close friendship was
because they did not want to be alone. They felt that the railroad stations
did not have names because they “were not meant to know where they
were going or, like Hansel and Gretel, to find the way back” (Byatt).

19. Byatt, A.S. “The Thing in the Forest”. The Norton Introduction to Literature. NY: W.W. Norton, 2013:
302-317. Print.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery”. The Middlebury Blog Network. 2005. Web.
<http://sites.middlebury.edu/individualandthesociety/files/2010/09/jacksonottery.pdf>
LeGuin, Ursula. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. Harel’s Corner. Web.
<http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt>
Mays, K. J. (2013). The Norton Introduction to Literature. NY: W.W. Norton, 2013. Print.