The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Analysis

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. This specific situation in Omelas can be approached in one or two ways, including either the deontological view or the utilitarianism view. However, the proper ethical dilemma relating to the city of Omelas would be the deontological view due to their beliefs not damaging anyone else's lives to preserve happiness to the population.

If I had the option to stay or leave Omelas, I would choose to stay and make plans for the future of the city to keep everyone happy instead of on the path to nowhere. Although it is unquestionably hard to even think about the way LeGuin describes the awful truth of a 10-year-old child suffering from the lack of food and love being kept in a dark, dirty basement room. The only food he gets is a half-bowl of corn meal per day and lying around on its own excrement for the rest of the day. It’s impossible for me to imagine this little child wretched in this awful situation, but what could I do as a citizen to help this child to get out from that ruined place?

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

In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” the citizens live in a utopian society, or at least they want Omelas to be a utopian society. If you go in depth of the story, you will realize that Omelas is not so perfect at all, and their surroundings are gilded. Omelas is dystopian that shows the suffering of one for the happiness of others. It is summer time in Omelas, and the city is having a festival. The festival is full of happy people, and everything is perfect. The happiness of the city of Omelas is just a coating for the suffering of a ten-year-old child. The child is locked away in a basement without sunlight, a little bit of food and no happiness at all, and this is all for the town happiness. Many people in this gilded society feel guilty

She states, “To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed” (Le Guin). Le Guin is referencing the idea that one life is not as important as all the other lives of the community. She assumes that making that child happy will begin to destroy the foundation the city is built upon, that guilt and anger and sadness will enter Omelas. However the experiences of other citizens is different when they see the child.

We never know what can come out of the blue, living in a world that we have built in our thoughts - world which requires courage, knowledge and pure awareness of what surround us. How difficult is to see, understand, except and live with the truth the way it is. Without the burden, the guilt and the pain we can’t learn, evolve to eventually reach a certain degree of happiness. “The ones who walked away from Omelas ” by Ursula K. Le. Guinn is a story about a city.

Introduction In a democratic society where the majority rules, minorities and their sufferings often get dismissed for the benefits of the majority. The story “The ones who walk away from Omelas” projects this phenomenon into a relationship between a child that is locked up and the people of Omelas. The story sorts the people of Omelas into two categories: those who continue to stay in Omelas, and the others who walk away from Omelas. To this account, Holloway’s work “The scream” produces an interesting viewpoint on interpreting the story “The ones who walk away from Omelas”.

The short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, by Ursula K. LeGuin, is a disturbing allegory that explains a shocking other-world, a promise of happiness, and an everlasting sense of security. LeGuin describes that the contentment of others exists completely from someone else’s’ expense. The utopian society seems unimaginable, a place so perfect that there is no need for rules or conformity. In order for this town to continue in bliss a child must be sacrificed in a broom closet, in its own feces, covered in gruesome sores. The story of Omelas closely connects with many modern day corporations, ranging from animal abuse, the mistreatment of workers (ie. sweatshops), loosely organized groupings or commercial enterprises, such as drug cartels (Who Is behind Mexico's

The bleak and insufferable existence of the child is the reason why the people of Omelas are able to love as they do, and enjoy life free of

These people reflect on what they have seen of the despair of the child and after thinking on what options they have they leave their homes and proceed to leave the city of Omelas. They leave the city of happiness, and havng been citizens of Omelas are truly happy people living their lives responsibly because of their knowledge of the miserable child. They leave alone, each individually. They each take their own initiative to separate themselves from a place that they now believe to be inadequate as a utopia.

Utopia and dystopia: different, yet the same. Utopia is a perfect universe one with darkness plunging into the light, or light propelling into darkness? The answer may vary from person to person because “I cannot suit you all” as Ursula Le Guin mentions in her essay “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”(LeGuin). Sure, a utopian society may sound appealing seeing as it is an imagined place where everything is perfect. However; it is such defined as imaginary due to the fact that one perfect idea is not perfect for every individual due to the core human instinct of selfishness festering in the mind, waiting to be released from the dungeon.

Ask yourselves this question, how many of you would rather not have to see the homeless man on your way to work? What if his being being could allow the rest of society to live happier lives? Utilitarianism, the theory that is most often associated with the principle of the greatest amount of happiness should allow one to answer those questions quite easily. Utilitarianism states that whatever actions allow for the greatest amount of happiness and the least amount of unhappiness should be taken as these are by definition “good”. The suffering of one individual is of very little concern then to the joys of the majority. This concern, the fear that Utilitarianism will simply lead to a tyranny of the majority to increase the maximum amount of

Utilitarianism is a philosophical theory centered around the idea that righteousness of one’s actions can only be determined by the goodness or badness of the consequences (Smart, 2006). The short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas provides an account of a fictional utopia built upon the suffering of a single child, and is often used to explore the ideas of Utilitarianism. The story probes the idea of Utilitarianism and sheds light on both positive and negative implications. The author begs the reader to make his own decision regarding the fictional dilemma, and in doing so one can’t help but think about the non-fictional world we live in. It is no secret that our first world way of living is built upon obtaining goods and labor

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" a short story, by Ursula K. Le Guin. The story is about a city full of merry and satisfied people, but in order to maintain happiness in the city, they required to imprison one innocent child in a room, and that child has to live miserably. The story is meaningful because it allows you to think critically if you are in that situation. The message of the story is: would you rather let the child to live miserably in order to make the whole city better? or would you free the child but make the whole city live miserably.

According to Tyson, and it is also noted in the assignment that, “an ideology is a belief system, and all belief systems are products of cultural conditioning” (Tyson, p.56). We are prompted in this discussion to articulate our understanding of a repressive ideology, and express its meaning with our own words. Therefore, the scene I chose from the story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is: