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Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

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The world today is built on the industry and technology that relies on the labour of workers who have to do all the exhausting and often dangerous work. People in the West can buy t-shirts for less than ten dollars because of the low wages that those in other counties have for sustenance. They live in horrid conditions and work in sweatshops so that the more privileged in the West can live in comfort. In Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, the city of Omelas lives under a paradigm of eternal happiness. There is no starvation, pain, and no sadness of any sort within its borders. Except, one windowless cell in which a child is kept in chains, shackled in pain and agony. The child that lives in damnation is what …show more content…

In fact, the amount of happiness in Omelas is almost off-putting. In the story it is stated that there are “beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood…”(Le Guin); however, one cannot help but think of the ridiculousness that a city like that would entail. Omelas is an over-the-top city that relies on the suffering of one lone child and those who partake in this injustice are faced with the moral qualm of whether or not to keep participating in this child’s misery. The nature of the happiness that Omelas possesses is so alien to us due to the unrestricted nature of the activities in the city, the orgies in the streets and casual nudity serve as a way of alienating the reader and to cause him to realize that this city cannot possibly exist without some further implications. Such is the message that Le Guin tries to show the reader at beginning of the short story. Omelas is supposed to be a beautiful city where nothing goes wrong, yet there is something wrong with it. Soon afterwards, it is revealed that the city rests on the suffering of one lone child and that without that suffering all their happiness in the city will turn to dust. This draws comparisons with the modern world where people in rich and powerful countries live in warmth and comfort that a person living in abject poverty can not even imagine. The wealthy then have to come to terms with their position. They, just like the citizen of Omelas, understand that for them to stay in comfort, an innocent has to suffer tremendously. The majority of the privileged come to terms with their situation by reasoning that the suffering of a few strangers is used to benefit many more people, and therefore the pain is justified. These are the people who stay in Omelas. There are also try to further the

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