Omelas Utilitarianism

In the United States, child abuse is reported every ten seconds.All together,     that’s almost four million maltreatment referrals received per year. Abuse does not only have to be physical; it could be sexual, financial, emotional, or psychological. In this book, Kambilli, Jaja, and their mother experienced abuse at the hands of their own father. Eugene (father of Kambilli and Jaja)  was a very religious, very  well respected man. He gave back to his community,he is known as Omolara which means man who does for the community.He is a saint who takes his religion as a catholic very serious. Eugene raised his children to never sin or disobey the lord or they would receive a cruel punishment. The children were kept on a tight leash. They follow

In the story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin the citizens of a town called Omelas are said to be very happy. The people are prosperous, talented, and peaceful. However, this fictional city has a dark secret masked by the prosperity and happiness that the citizens enjoy. This prosperity is at the expense of a single suffering child imprisoned in a basement. The town’s residents are apparently so shocked by the discovery that some leave town but many stay knowing that a child is suffering so that they may remain “happy” (Le Guin, 1993). The conflict in this story is man vs man. More precisely, this is man struggling with his own conscience. Residents struggle to respond to a town in which the suffering of others is ignored and in some cases promoted. The story notes that no one can claim ignorance of the child’s suffering and its role in the town’s prosperity. “They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there” (Le Guin, 1993). At this point in the story, the conflict of conscience

The people who leave Omelas who don’t want to deal with the child’s suffering, they simply cannot justify why it happens, these people can’t live happily knowing that their happiness comes from the cost of another’s humanity. The ones who walk away from Omelas have rejected the terms of this perfect society and walk away.

But there are some who walk away from Omelas. These are few, but they are the ones that have guilt. They could not live in a place, no matter how perfect, that thrives off a child's torment.

The idea of scapegoatism: sacrifice for the ultimate good for all. A prominent theme that is featured in the literary work, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin; a fictional piece written in third-person omniscient. Diction informs the reader that the speaker is knowledgeable of the cultures and ways of the people in Omelas. The speaker begins by describing a Utopian city called Omelas, where the happiness of this city is solely dependent on the sacrifice of a single child. Similar to the Pentateuch, which also focuses on sacrifice, this story is about a child whose sacrifice was not voluntary. In this story the people of Omelas are mindful of their decision to sacrifice an innocent child. The child spends a lifetime of suffering in exchange for their lives to remain free from rules, morality, and guilt, a life where they can self-indulge at the expense of an innocent.

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

Sometimes, people who visit the child have a different reaction, they do “not go home to weep or rage, [do] not, in fact, go home at all.” These are the people that walk away, these are the people that refuse to let guilt control their life, these are the people who confront their feelings and not bury them. Le Guin continues to respect the people who leave, as she writes about how they demonstrate compassion. “Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox,” describes how the children seeing the child for the first time react. While the children mostly act the same way when they see the child, in a fit of rage as described earlier, what differs from those that stay and those that leave, regarding compassion, is whether they feel more compassion towards the suffering child or the potential of an unhappy community. Those that leave tend to dwell on the compassion that they feel for the child, and tend to not feel as much compassion towards the community as a whole. The guilt regarding the child's condition, that is felt by those who leave, may never subside. This is not true for all the citizens of Omelas, as others look at the suffering of the child in terms of the communities greater

There is no way the city of Omelas could imprison all children or citizens in the city of Omelas, so if it cannot be made into a universal law then there is no justification of the action being done. Additionally, the second maxim relates to treating no one as a means to an end. Treating no one as a means to an end means behaving a certain way towards an individual just to get something out of them. With the child’s suffrage in the compact cellar room, they are respecting it as a means to the overall happiness in the city of Omelas. By behaving towards the child this specific way, they are treating him or her in a certain way just to get satisfaction and happiness and the end result shows it is a terrible action. Another problem deontologists view is that the people of Omelas know about the suffrage of the child, so there is nothing hidden from the citizens. Several of the townspeople even go see the child, but yet no one has done anything about it. All of the people that do nothing or the people that leave the city of Omelas are no help to the suffrage of the child due their action of entirely leaving or ignoring the situation has no good will. With all of these mistreatments given to the child living in horrible conditions, there is no way that anyone in the city of Omelas should be enjoying happiness.

Could one give a justification for making an innocent individual suffer just to preserve the happiness of the greater good? In the story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin, the life of a young child is ignored and imprisoned in order to make others happy. However, the situation in Omelas can be approached in one or two ways, including either the deontological view or the utilitarianism view. The city of Omelas is portrayed to individuals as a welcoming place that is full of festivals and happiness.

In a Utilitarian world the lives and needs of the many in the society are put over the needs of the few. This idea is seen in a lot of popular dystopian movies like the hunger games, divergent, and harry potter. This is a common theme in literature and movies because it is a safe way to picture the crazy “what ifs” in life. In “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas ” by Ursula Le Guin, all of humanity will be happy and safe if one child is kept neglected and abused for all life. Obviously, in an ideal world the rights of every single person would be important but when not only your happiness is on the line but your children, family, friends, and the rest of the society’s happiness and livelihood is on the line I believe that most people would trade the happiness of one for the happiness of all society. In “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" the true purpose of the article is to debate the ethical ideology between a utilitarian vs. egalitarian society. It is uncomfortable to discuss because there is no obvious answer, no matter what there will be negative consequences. Also, it's a real life question, it’s not something purely fictional, its something a debate that occurs every day and effects the lives of many. Societies are built on the foundation that every person is equal, and in theory this is a wonderful idea.When we live in a world of over 7 billion people, the question has to be asked “if the good of the society is more important than the suffering of one person”. Take

In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin, the informally-speaking narrator depicts a cookie-cutter utopia with perpetually happy citizens that sing and dance in the music-filled streets during the Festival of Summer. However, under one of the beautiful public buildings lays a child, no older than ten years-old, who lays in its own excrement. Although the citizens know the emancipated child is there, they refuse to act upon the child’s suffering, for their happiness depends entirely on the child’s abominable misery. Through ethos, the narrator illustrates this utopian society with a casual tone and frequently asks the audience for their input. Le Guin’s fairy-tale introduction of the story establishes her credibility through her extensive knowledge and understanding of the people of Omelas. Le Guin utilizes logos through the narrator’s second person point of view which incites the audience to draw their own conclusions about the city of Omelas and question their own justifications of the child’s existence. The concept of the happiness of many relying on the necessary suffering of one forces the reader to question their own morals and their justifications for the child’s physical and mental condition. Through ethos, logos, and pathos, Le Guin presents the contrast and divide between the citizens of Omelas and the child in the cellar in order to challenge the reader’s capacity for moral self-conception.

The Omelas’ behavior is considered moral through utilitarianism. In the textbook, utilitarianism is defined as “the sum of individual pleasures and pains. It is not my pleasures or pains that matter-but the cumulative happiness of a number of people” (MacKinnon 93). Under this, it is just for the Omelas to make one child suffer to maintain the happiness of the society. Utilitarianism is better explained and supported by the trolley problem, a hypothetical case where you have the power to allow a trolley to kill five workers or one worker by pulling a switch. According to utilitarianism, “you would not only be permitted, but required to pull the switch, which would result in one death and five lives saved” (MacKinnon 100). By losing one life

With regards to the Omelas article, rule utilitarianism would create a rule that could say that torture is wrong under all circumstances. This would give value to the child’s life and the child’s suffering. It would promote that we not allow the child to live in squalor so that the child would be free to live in a horrible society filled with corruption and evil. The story says that if the child were to go free “all the prosperity and beauty of Omelas would wither and be destroyed” (Le Guin 234). Rule utilitarianism would stand that this be an acceptable outcome for Omelas, simply because it would no longer be inflicting the suffering upon this one person. The level of destruction Omelas would face is seemingly insignificant to rule

The adage of not judging a book by its cover has strong grounds in ethical philosophy. While at first glance, utilitarianism is designed to bring the most happiness into the world, it’s failure to explicitly respect the rights of humans delegitimizes its philosophy. Deontology provides a more compelling ethical and moral approach because of its intrinsic respect for human life. In my current workplace, there was a study idea to look at the effects of using total parenteral nutrition (TPN) versus tube feeds on the gut flora of the patients. The TPN enters the body via an intravenous catheter, whereas the tube feeding enters via a tube in the nose into the gastrointestinal tract, which can lead to different side effects on their health. The most likely side

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" demonstrates how happiness can’t exist without moral sacrifice through its use of symbol. The child being kept alone in a locked room underneath the most beautiful building of the city is a symbol of how someone’s happiness in Omelas depends entirely on that child’s misery: "they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships…depends wholly on this child’s abominable misery" (246). This passage makes it clear that happiness can only occur if Omelas’ citizens act like they constantly forget the child’s existence and let it "live" in its constant suffering. It’s evident that this symbol illustrates the delicate relation between happiness and moral sacrifice.