According to Collins English dictionary, Helplessness is being deprived of strength or power. People with authority use scapegoats, who are hopeless to take on their responsibilities. Family members and or the community cause helplessness on people with less authority. Helplessness is felt and displayed in the lives of different characters in the short stories The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Araby, Metamorphosis, and Young Goodman Brown. In the story, Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Gregor wakes up and found himself transformed into an insect. Immediately after, he notices that things he used to do without any problem he now is can’t, it was hard for him to get out of bed so being able to go to his job wasn’t an option. Being the only one who was employed in his family he had obligations to fill. He accepted a job that he hated so much in-order to pay his family’s debt because of the authority they had over him. Gregor could not wait till he was able to quit his job but staying at his job to provide for his family was his main priority. He stated, “If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to …show more content…
Le Guin, a society where everyone lives in a guaranteed happiness. In this utopia, there isn’t need for rules or laws. Everyone in this society has authority, except the child locked in a cage and is forced to live naked in its own filth in the townhouse building. He is given half a bowl of cornmeal grease a day. No one can speak to the child or stay with it for long. Le Guin states, “The child used to scream for help at night and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining.” The child barely talks anymore, except for a bit of whining gibberish, he has become so hopeless that anyone would free him from this misery because he used to scream for help at night and cry a lot but he was never