Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Self preservation and personal comfort, another consistent theme throughout the story is continuously perpetuated as generation-after-generation of residents are introduced to the unspeakable treatment of this helpless child. Ironically when first exposed to the atrocity, most children were more disgusted and outraged by the horrible predicament of the child than the adults who by all accounts should have been responsible for its protection. This obvious moral role reversal signifies a purity and innocence that is often present in a child’s perspective that is untarnished by corrupt societal teachings and norms. Additionally, the comparison between the moral integrity of

In the text, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, the narrator describes the town of Omelas as a pleasant utopia that can cater to the reader. However,

In Omelas, the tortured child is not a secret. Everybody, as young as eight years old, knows about this abused child, but no one ever tries to stop it. The sacrifice of this child “is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding…often enough an adult comes, or comes back…Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it,” (Le Guin 37). People are capable of leaving this town and not participating in the torture of a child, but only a few people do. For the rest of the children that see this and grow up in Omelas, they accept this tradition and will naturally pass it on to their children and their children will pass it on and this cycle will continue.

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.

It’s quite gruesome. Some can’t handle the wrong being done to this child. A few individuals begin to think that if their society lets this happen what else is wrong in Omelas? Is it not as perfect as it seems? They can’t deal with the fact that their happiness relies on the “child’s abominable misery” (3).

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

This is also seen in America. There are soldiers on the other side of the world dying for the freedoms exercised by Americans. Nobody fully gets why this needs to be. There is no reason or justification for the lives lost to protect Americas freedom, just as there is none for the child's horrible life to protect the Omelas society.

According to the text, “No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.” (Ursula Le Guin, 6) Before this passage in the text, a thorough description of the child is provided, the main point being that it has lived neglected for its entire life. Because the child has experienced no part of the utopian world the citizens of Omelas have come to know, it doesn’t have to experience the realization that a world once thought perfect is painfully flawed. Not to say that the child’s physical agony is not atrocious, but the sudden emotional piecing of the fact that one must suffer for the happiness of their city is a different and sharper kind of

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.

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

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.

As previously stated, the narrator is the one who describes and foreshadows the scapegoat use of the child. The narrator described a lack of guilt in Omelas which leads to the idea of scapegoatism. Once the narrator reveals the child and the harsh conditions in which it lives, the narrator also reveals uses of the child. In fact, the narrator makes the reader aware of the scapegoat by stating, “They all know it has to be there,” (252). After the narrator explains how the people of Omelas know the child has to remain in its tortured cellar, he/she explains that their city and its beauty depends on it (252). The depiction of needing the child for the ultimate happiness of the utopia basically describes using him/her as the person to blame. Basically, the child is giving the people of Omelas someone to blame for all the minor flaws, so that they can continue their happy life. Lastly, the narrator explains the theme of ignorance being bliss when he/she describes, “Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there,” (252). Since the narrator tells the reader that not everyone goes to see the child, he/she is telling the audience that some choose to not see it. If they don’t see the child suffering then they can pretend it is not, and they can

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.

The city is a beautiful metropolis consisting of shops, houses and numerous residences that are designed in a fantasy-like architecture. Many Seraphs and humans roaming the streets under a clear sky. It was a peaceful day for them.

People were disappearing from the city. It was a big city some of it had tall new buildings that only a fraction of its citizens had been in. Crisp blue skies and brand new cars, people dressed in nice suits and dresses lined the streets. Going from the nice big buildings on the left side of the city to the right the buildings got progressively smaller as the miles past and by the time you reached 15 miles and you have reached the outskirts of town there was a river. It seems pleasant on paper though along that river was inhabited by hundreds of families in close quarters, shacks constructed from cardboard, wood scraps, branches, tar paper, glass and old stones littered the area. The cardboard had to be replaced after every rain storm but