In The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin uses the sharp contrast between the perfect city of Omelas and the suffering child in the basement to explore the ethics of happiness and morality. The city is portrayed as a perfect place where everyone is joyful, free, and thriving. However, this happiness relies entirely on the suffering of one child, who is locked in a dark, dirty room. This child endures neglect, hunger, and abuse, and the city’s well-being is dependent on the child’s pain. Le Guin uses the child’s suffering to show the moral cost of the city’s happiness. The people of Omelas know about the…

In Recitatif, Toni Morrison uses ambiguity and the absence of explicit racial markers to explore themes of identity, memory, and the complexities of race. One example of ambiguity is when Twyla and Roberta first meet at the shelter. Hints about their backgrounds, such as Twyla’s mother being “too busy” and Roberta’s family being more “well-off,” Morrison never explicitly states whether they are Black or white. Early on, Twyla mentions how people assumed she and Roberta were of different races, but the story never confirms it. This ambiguity forces readers to question their own assumptions about race and class and highlights how racial identity can be constructed based on appearance or…

In Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin uses jazz music as a powerful symbol to explore themes of identity, community, and the power of artistic expression. Music, especially jazz, helps the characters express feelings and experiences that words cannot fully capture. Through Sonny’s love of music, Baldwin shows how it can provide a sense of identity and connect people to each other. First, Baldwin uses jazz to highlight Sonny’s struggle for personal identity. Sonny turns to music to express the pain and hardships of his life, particularly his addiction and the struggles of growing up in Harlem. The narrator learns that Sonny’s music is a way for him to communicate his deep…