The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

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.

In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" author Ursula K. Le Guin uses the utopian society of Omelas to symbolically highlight the ugly and unsavory state of the human condition. The stories unidentified narrator paints a colorful picture of Omelas and ironically describes its residents as happy, joyous and not at all barbaric. Although Le Guin describes Omelas as a delightful even whimsical place that affords its citizens “…happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of the of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weather of their skies”; we come to discover just the opposite (5). At its core we find a

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.

As a result, the response of the other inhabitants exemplifies the connection between the dark and ignorance. As the narrator explains the excuses for keeping the child imprisoned, they claim, “even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom. after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes” (Le Guin 4). To justify their mistreatment towards the child, the citizens of Omelas insist that they would not thrive in the outside

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

Conventional ideas of utopia are upended by the sharp contrast between the child's concealed suffering and the city's seeming wealth, which forces a closer look at moral responsibility and social collaboration. Le Guin forces readers to rethink conventional ideas about happiness, justice, and collective duty by presenting them with the disturbing truth of Omelas' moral calculus. Readers are forced to face hard realities about the compromises made in the name of achieving social harmony as they consider the moral ramifications of the child's situation. As a result, Le Guin's story acts as an effective catalyst for reflection, asking readers to weigh the true cost of utopia and the boundaries of morality when confronted with structural injustice. Le Guin's excellent use of narrative technique in "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" goes beyond simple storytelling and functions as a sophisticated means of getting into important philosophical

The short story ‘The ones who walk away from Omelas’, written by Ursula K. Le Guin is about an extraordinary city whose people live their lives with content. However, the prosperity of this city is paid for by the suffering of a child in a basement. I was disgusted by the dark secret the city of Omelas held. A child that is neglected and isolated in a small broom-closet is there because it's suffering is the reason why all the people of Omelas are so happy. Everyone in Omelas knows about this child, they learn about when they 8-12.

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 short story of " The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" starts in the setting of early summer at the Summer Festival, this is a festival that the citizens of Omelas put on to celebrate life. The Summer Fest is held in the big green fields surrounding Omelas, where the wonderful smell of cooking comes from the different tents set up all around the fields, children are running around playing with friends, an old women is handing out flowers to everyone at the festival, and many other events are occurring at the festival. But under one of the beautiful houses in Omelas, there is a room that has a locked door and no windows. In this room a child is sitting in the corner dirty and abused. The child looks to be about six years old but is nearly ten years old, the gender of the child is unknown. People do not come and see the child, only when people come to abuse the child does the child see people. Everyone in Omelas knowns about the child but no one ever tries to save the child because the citizens know that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the

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.

There lies a basement under one of the buildings and in there prevails a locked room with no windows. There’s dirt in the cellular and many rusty old necessities in the room. The narrator continues to describe that the room is three paces long and two wide and unlocks a discovery of a lonely child sitting in the room. Some people walk past and look at the kid, but don’t say a word. The narrator then says, “The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, “eh-haa, eh-haa,” and it speaks less and less often.” (Le Guin). It’s important to realize that this city might not be so perfect after all and these people are living in a fake society. This child plays an essential role in exhibiting misery to make activity probable in the city. Those who encounter the child and feel empathy for him/her have experienced other emotions. They also feel the other emotions of guilt, anger, disgust, sickened, and shocked at the sight of the child. They want to do something, but they can’t. Provided this, they soon realize their happy lives have been phony and they leave Omelas to start a new fresh, real, and happy

The children are happy, and the adults, “mature, intelligent, [and] passionate” (2), with no need for a hierarchal church or government (6). It is indeed a utopia, for all except the suffering child. The beautiful city, the kind weather, the abundance of harvest, and most of all, the happiness of the people here, but as Honore de Balzac once said, “Behind every great fortune there is a crime”, and the crime here is that is that the utopia of Omelas is supported by the misery of a single child. “It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked.

The child in the basement is left to fend for itself, left covered in their own feces in order to maintain the lavish lifestyle of the citizens of Omelas. Sacrifices should be made only with the person’s consent; the feeble-minded child cannot consent to the abusive behaviors that the citizens of Omelas do. In order for Omelas to flourish, the child cannot feel happiness; which is a harsh sacrifice for the greater good. “They know that if the wretched one were not