The Ones Who Walk Away From House Of By Ursula Le Guin

The short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, written by Ursula Le Guin, is about a so-called perfect society where the sacrifice of a child is what provides harmony, equality, and prosperity to the citizens of this city. As a reader, one is invited to create and visualize their own utopia, so that one is emerged with the reality of a moral dilemma: the happiness of many for the unhappiness of one. The symbol represented in the story reflects current and past society issues such as military sacrifice, slavery, and injustice.

The story begins with a description of the husband. "He was a good husband, a good father" (Le Guin 3), "He was always gentle" (Le Guin 3). These lines create confusion, it makes the audience question. In order for the questions to be answered finalizing the story would have to be done. This foreshadows what will occur later on the story. Le Guin tells about how they first met and about how his sophistication attracted her.

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

In today’s world one of the most important things is education and they way citizens’ think. One example, of a control method in both society’s is to control citizens’ consciousness and education. In the society of “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas” citizens have happy consciousness, but are educated of the child who has to suffer. Which makes citizens’ of Omelas feel bad because of the suffering the child has to experience. As stated in “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas” “The know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the one one, the flute-player could make no joyful music…”(3) This quote shows that the suffering that child goes through is for the benefit of the others of Omelas. In contrast to the “Brave New World”

For instance, she asks readers questions such as: “But what else should there be?” (2), “ What else, what else belongs in the joyous city?” (2), and “How can I tell you about the people of Omelas?” (1). This style develops the theme by building suspense until the main theme is presented. Since the imprisoned child is not described until three quarters of the way into the story, Le Guin had to conceive a new structure to prevent the reader from getting bored. It is genius the way that Le Guin uses her creative structure. By developing the story as she goes, readers stay on their toes, questioning whether the new addition to Omelas will stick with that story, or fail to meet Le Guin’s expectations. Le Guin also uses diction in order to present her theme about scapegoating. This is especially true in her description of the captured child. She chooses words that have negative connotations, such as “naked”, “excrement”, “dirt”, “clotted” and “fowl-smelling”. The negatively connated words then help readers to feel the sympathy necessary to understand that the child is an innocent scapegoat, who is treated poorly for no good reason.

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.

This theme is consistent throughout the story and most evident for instance, when the narrator states that their "Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive" (2). Here Le Guin establishes the basis and justification for the peoples malicious mistreatment of this child and reveals that the “child’s abominable misery” is absolutely necessary to maintain their collective happiness (5). For this reason, this revelation is a clear parallel to present day humanity that continually justify evil misdeeds and abuses as a means to an end of ensuring their happiness without guilt or consideration for others.

community can be viewed as prosperous, peaceful, and the epitome of perfection; however, as time goes on, it is revealed that all is not as it seems. Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is one such example of a place not being as peaceful as first made out. Omelas is portrayed as the most perfect place to live; however, behind the scenes, all the prosperity is the result of a single child's suffering. In a society such as this, even if a single individual is suffering, it will never truly be perfect. Dystopian communities will try to present themselves as outstandingly flawless while also trying to hide the fact that there is still suffering amongst the prosperity.

The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas is a short story written by Ursula Le Guin. In her story, Le Guin creates a model Utilitarian society in which the majority of its citizens are devoid of suffering; allowing them to become an expressive, artistic population. Le Guin’s unrelenting pursuit of making the reader imagine a rich, happy and festival abundant society mushrooms and ultimately climaxes with the introduction of the outlet for all of Omelas’ avoided misfortune. Le Guin then introduces a coming of age ritual in which innocent adolescents of the city are made aware of the byproduct of their happiness. She advances with a scenario where most of these adolescents are extremely burdened at

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

First, in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, Ursula Le Guin focuses on the

Le Guin has written “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” in such a way that its interpretation depends on the reader and not the text. It is the reader's perspective in life and the world that shapes the image he perceives while reading this story. The citizens of Omelas are referred to as they while everyone who does not live in Omelas is referred to as we to show that they are separate from us. The author does this early in the story to show the reader that the people in Omelas are not like the reader. They are very different. Le Guin continues with this strategy when she plays with the minds of the readers by suggesting ideas into the heads of the readers then shortly afterwards she retracts these ideas. A great example of this is when she suggests there is a King who is on a stallion and surrounded by knights, but in the next line tells us that there is no King. This procedure has the reader picturing an image then later having to dismiss this image time and time again. This style is very clever because it keeps the reader interested and guessing

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

LeGuin’s description of Omelas engages all of one’s senses through her usage of rich visual, auditory and tactile imagery to ‘prove’ to the reader that Omelas is undeniably a utopia. The city of Omelas can be described as a place in which the inhabitants’ senses are constantly overwhelmed by sensations which are pleasing to their eyes, beautiful to their ears and sweet to their tongues. The unchanging state of this society which is surrounded constantly by sensory delight can be found in these descriptions; for instance, the “child of nine or ten [who] sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute […] he never ceases playing” (LeGuin 275). In addition to the wooden flute, LeGuin describes, “a shimmering of gong and tambourine” (LeGuin 273). Following the narrator’s stunning description of everything which makes Omelas a utopia, her statement that the reader may, if he pleases, “add an orgy” in order to make the Omelas less “goody-goody,” makes it apparent that Omelas in many ways does not have to be concrete and limited to the previously provided descriptions. Her aim is not to describe a particular city, although it is named and its characteristics are already expressed, but to present the idea of a perfect city, a utopia in which bliss is fixed, and good fortune is wholly

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.