Product Description

Some inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #815683 in Books
• Published on: 1992-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 32 pages

Customer Reviews

Profound
This is a story that haunts you long after you've read it and after you think you've forgotten it. I think that it is a perfect parallel for The Giver. Rather than distribute normal life pains and anguish among a society, only one is chosen to suffer, allowing the remainder of society to experience utopia.

Keep your brain alive
This short story place the reader in front of a fantastic city of happiness. However, this is not a fairy tale, and if only you go deeper (no great effort, I ensure you, as this is the goal of the writer) you will start wondering about the sense of happiness and sorrow, good and evil, life and death. There is no simple explaination of these themes, nor a simple corrispondence between fictional and real conceps. If you need an explanation, this is not the place to look. But if you want a suggestion, read this story, because it's worth it.

the ones who RUN away
It's curious that so many reviewers identify so uncritically with those who walk away. I think that is the base-note of the story - having enough wit to see wrong but not enough imagination/courage to change it.

A friend of mine teaches this story in college. There is a goose-bump moment when one student comprehends why the story is named what it is and what it is actually naming. The ones who walk away are defined not by their refusal to be cruel but by their refusal to do anything about it.