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feralphoenixRebloggable on tumblr here!
CONTENT WARNING FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay contains discussion of reproductive abuse, infanticide, child abuse, and many of the darker aspects of Hallownest’s society.
ALSO, AS USUAL: I read Hollow Knight as anti-colonialist fiction and all of my meta approaches the text from that angle. If you come from a Christian cultural background (regardless of whether you currently practice the religion or not), some of the concepts I am going to discuss may be challenging for you. Please be responsible in your choice whether to engage with this content, and also, be respectful here or wherever else you’re discussing this essay. Thanks.
THE ONE WHO WALKED AWAY FROM OMELAS: A Closer Look At White Lady
Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, first published in 1973, is a staple of literature and ethics courses in North American education (at the very least; English speakers from other countries chime in as to whether they made you do this one as well and how many times they made you do it. Personally I got assigned it like 10 or 15 times). In case some members of my audience are unfamiliar with the story or don’t remember it and are thus wondering why tf I’m bringing it up in a Hollow Knight essay, I’ll briefly summarize it now.
Omelas, the story’s narrator informs us, is a perfectly utopian city where everyone lives in bliss, the people are intelligent and cultured, all resources are distributed communally, and there are no kings, soldiers, priests, or slaves. The narrator explains to us that it is a fairy tale-like ideal place of peace and serenity, and then tells us that the city’s utopian splendor hinges on using one unfortunate child as a scapegoat, keeping this child in a state of neverending filth and misery. Citizens of Omelas are shown this child and told the cost of their utopia when they come of age. Most of them overcome their shock and accept this reality because it secures the happiness of everyone else in the city, but a minority of citizens choose to leave Omelas rather than benefit from the child’s suffering.
In United States schooling this story is most often taught as a “what would you do if you lived in Omelas?” sort of hypothetical moral dilemma, and therefore there tends to be a lot of offense about why no one rescues the child in question. This method of teaching the story cleanly sidesteps that Le Guin means Omelas as a metaphor for the way that Westernized, capitalist societies and their many conveniences are uniformly built upon atrocities and oppression. For just a few US examples, we have class inequality, the use of prisoners as slave labor, and the way our military has exploited and continues to exploit Middle Eastern and South American countries for natural resources and to maintain political dominance. Once you learn of your own country’s evils, Le Guin asks, will you accept them for the sake of your own comfort, or will you find some way to take a stand against them, find a way to refuse participating in or benefiting from them?
This is metaphorical in the real world, of course, but less so in Hallownest: The house the Pale King built, demonstrably far from utopian though it is, very literally hinges on the abuse and abandonment of a single child for its survival.
( tl;dr hk fandom needs to drink its respecting women juice )
CONTENT WARNING FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay contains discussion of reproductive abuse, infanticide, child abuse, and many of the darker aspects of Hallownest’s society.
ALSO, AS USUAL: I read Hollow Knight as anti-colonialist fiction and all of my meta approaches the text from that angle. If you come from a Christian cultural background (regardless of whether you currently practice the religion or not), some of the concepts I am going to discuss may be challenging for you. Please be responsible in your choice whether to engage with this content, and also, be respectful here or wherever else you’re discussing this essay. Thanks.
THE ONE WHO WALKED AWAY FROM OMELAS: A Closer Look At White Lady
Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, first published in 1973, is a staple of literature and ethics courses in North American education (at the very least; English speakers from other countries chime in as to whether they made you do this one as well and how many times they made you do it. Personally I got assigned it like 10 or 15 times). In case some members of my audience are unfamiliar with the story or don’t remember it and are thus wondering why tf I’m bringing it up in a Hollow Knight essay, I’ll briefly summarize it now.
Omelas, the story’s narrator informs us, is a perfectly utopian city where everyone lives in bliss, the people are intelligent and cultured, all resources are distributed communally, and there are no kings, soldiers, priests, or slaves. The narrator explains to us that it is a fairy tale-like ideal place of peace and serenity, and then tells us that the city’s utopian splendor hinges on using one unfortunate child as a scapegoat, keeping this child in a state of neverending filth and misery. Citizens of Omelas are shown this child and told the cost of their utopia when they come of age. Most of them overcome their shock and accept this reality because it secures the happiness of everyone else in the city, but a minority of citizens choose to leave Omelas rather than benefit from the child’s suffering.
In United States schooling this story is most often taught as a “what would you do if you lived in Omelas?” sort of hypothetical moral dilemma, and therefore there tends to be a lot of offense about why no one rescues the child in question. This method of teaching the story cleanly sidesteps that Le Guin means Omelas as a metaphor for the way that Westernized, capitalist societies and their many conveniences are uniformly built upon atrocities and oppression. For just a few US examples, we have class inequality, the use of prisoners as slave labor, and the way our military has exploited and continues to exploit Middle Eastern and South American countries for natural resources and to maintain political dominance. Once you learn of your own country’s evils, Le Guin asks, will you accept them for the sake of your own comfort, or will you find some way to take a stand against them, find a way to refuse participating in or benefiting from them?
This is metaphorical in the real world, of course, but less so in Hallownest: The house the Pale King built, demonstrably far from utopian though it is, very literally hinges on the abuse and abandonment of a single child for its survival.
( tl;dr hk fandom needs to drink its respecting women juice )
