Omelas Research Paper

Omelas is supposed to be the perfect city. It is stated that the people there know no suffering “Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How is one to describe the citizens of Omelas?” This perfect world makes it difficult to dispute that anyone should leave. Then, we are faced with the more problematic aspects of Omelas. This refers to the suffering child. “To exchange all of the goodness and grace for that single, small improvement…” This aspect of Omelas is appalling to most people. However, not all would be willing to exchange that for the ideal society that is Omelas.

Some days we had to process five hundred or more people. ...But nothing mitigated the moment when I had to take them to their new homes. ...You’d have to take these people into this dingy excuse for a room, twenty by twenty-five feet at best. These were people who’d left everything behind, sometimes fine houses. I learned after the first day not to enter with the family, but to stand outside. It was too terrible to witness the pain in people’s faces, too shameful for them to be seen in this degrading situation.” It must have been grueling to leave the house, bringing only the most important things that people needed. To show a single person how big a room was, moreover for it to be a family. Keeping a positive attitude must have been extremely hard, but people were able to do it, even in one of the most horrible situations there could be. Sixteen year old Louise Ogawa stated, “This trip has made me realize the wonderful work of nature. Her delicate work in shaping the stone mountains, the beautiful coloring of the surroundings—it seemed as if I was looking at the picture or a painting of a genius” (Oppenheim par. 21). This proves that Ogawa chose to look at the bright side of things even though she was forced out of her house and sent somewhere in the middle of nowhere. She has realized this trip to the internment camps has made her appreciate

In the New York Times, the article, ‘Invisible Child’ written by Andrea Elliott who is an investigative reporter, and photographed by Ruth Fremson. The writer talks about Dasani and her family. Dasani who is an 11 years old, also she is a homeless children in New York City. Generally, this article informs that homeless people’s life and their child. Moreover, this article shows that the girl, Dasani. She lives in shelter for homeless people in Brooklyn. Her parents have no job and also they are drug addicted. Furthermore, the shelter where Dasani and her family are living place, Elliott explains that "The smaller children lie tangled beside her, their chest rising and falling under winter coats and wool blankets. A few feet away, their mother

In the second half of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, a child was introduced. No one knew if it was a he or she, it had no name, no clothing, no one was even allowed to speak to it. This child was stuck in a room to be tortured, in the city of happiness, Omelas. This child’s suffering was the only thing keeping this town’s joy alive. More specifically, Le Guin wrote, “...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 markers, even the abundance of

It is estimated that over 90% of today's NFL players have a brain issue even if they do not know about it. On average, each football player gets hit 2,500 times to the head in a career. The centers take about 25,000 tackles to the head in an average career if they go to the NFL. After 9 or 10 concussions, you probably have a disease in you. In the year 2015, there were 271 concussions, in 2014, there were 206, in 2013, there was 229, and in 2012, there was 261 concussions. That adds up to 967 in 4 years. Dr Bennett Omalu was the first doctor to find this brain issue, and he has a foundation to help the players and families that have suffered with this issue. He named it Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. CTE is a brain disease that

It is most certainly okay to let a child sit in a closet, malnourished and unsocial, for the general population's happiness. Most people would say no, but in the town of Omelas, this is how they are able to obtain happiness. There are some contradicting opinions in Omelas, as some accept this fact and others can not bear it. Throughout this town, guilt is felt by all; how different people deal with it is what differs among the citizens of Omelas. Ursula Le Guin portrays the contradicting effects of guilt on different people by demonstrating how some flee from the cause of guilt while others bury it in their mind.

In the idea of utilitarianism, people will sacrifice themselves for the betterment of others’ lives, sometimes willingly and sometimes unwillingly. Ursula LeGuin, the author of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, utilizes this idea to express how the society in Omelas is able to ensure happiness and perfect lives while one child suffers. This is the price that they pay, seemingly unknowingly unless they are a certain age, to have a utopian society. When someone finds out about why they live in such bliss, they are left with a choice; stay in Omelas knowing that the child must suffer for their, and everyone’s, happiness, or, to leave Omelas unknowing of what their life might entail. Today, society shows ways that we truly fulfill the idea

Oma Else was first and foremost my grandmother. That’s all I ever knew of her and, more importantly, that’s all I ever cared to know growing up. At first, she was the grandmother I would always see for Thanksgiving, along with Opa Dave. I’d see her in the summer, too. Then she became the grandmother who’d come for Christmas. She would appear for performances and graduations, too. And then she was gone. Those are the memories I have of her. They are lovely, fond memories, but they do not represent most of my life.

All of the narrator's questions invite the reader to place ;himself in the position of the people of Omelas. Do you need this to make you happy? Then you may have it. Once the reader begins to enjoy the city and begins to see its happiness as a good thing, then the reader, like the adolescents in the story, must be shown that on which the happiness depends. Readers must face the question of what they would be willing to sacrifice for happiness. In Omelas, the people have no guilt so they are able to sacrifice the child for their happiness with no remorse because they are happy.

As the people of Omelas continued to accept the truth of their city, some have begun to see the child as more of an it than a person and regarded the child similar to a wild animal. “One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes” (245). Not only do the residents accept the child’s misery, they have also

Walking away from such a place might not be so easy to do, but there were some who did “At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who got to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all”(257). It’s a place of joy but at a cost of another, some people couldn’t bear the thought and would leave Omelas “These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking and walk straight out of the city of Omelas thought the beautiful gates”(257). The narrator seems to be ok with people leaving this happy but sad place, and she would be one to walk away.

Even if, this child’s misery was the reason why Omelas was looking good, it stills a shock for me that an entire population will let a poor child suffer for the sake of good fortune. It’s seems as the whole town of Omelas was full of immoral people. I really felt disgust about this story because I image this child being one of my nephews and I felt horrible. I felt mostly disgust by the family of this child because at least if people do not have compassion on the child what about his own family. Moreover, I certainly did not like the way the author refers to the child as “it” (par.12) in the story.

Omelas lives and thrives on top literally on top of a child's misery. The child lives in a tool closet under this society that represents so much hope and joy, but it remembers the utopia that the child was taken from. It still remembers his/her mother’s voice. The reason behind this is that “all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city… depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (256). Everyone’s own misery goes to this child in the tool closet; to have eternal happiness you must know sadness.

The citizens come to the consensus that nothing can be done for the child, and nothing should be done. To help this one miserable child would lead to the suffering of an entire city, after all. This is what the narrator persuades us to think. She uses many methods to prove her point. For instance, she tells us that if the child were to be saved, “in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed.” (1552). She defends the people of Omelas, who are not heartless, cruel, mindless “simple utopians,” but instead as passionate, intelligent, gentle people capable of sympathy. However, they understand that “the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars…the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.” (1552). Not only this, but she asserts that the child is too “imbecile” to recognize love anymore; it has grown too used to the darkness of the cellar to ever revert back to normal civilized life. At every turn, she finds a way to argue against compassion and in favor of causing pain; she portrays the assessment the Omelasians make of the child to be so logical and responsible that even the reader starts to buy into it. Why help the child? There is no point, is there? Continuing this abusive treatment of it is for the good of the order, isn’t it? The narrator makes it extremely easy to

Men and women walk the streets, and weep at the fact of the child in the cellar. The child in the cellar is the existence of why the Omelas treat their children gentle but yet full of compassion and joyful love for happiness. The tearless rage, treatment, freedom, and acceptance of the Omelas to the child have long ever to be free and fearful.