The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Analysis

The rules of the contract cannot be broken and any amount of human misery is unavoidable: therefore, suicide becomes the only option for opting-out. The honorable, humane, just people who opt-out are symbolized as walking away from Omelas, but it is obvious that they are self-destructing. Le Guin further states that “Any particular assertion of what the story “means” will of course receive an indignant or indulgent denial” from her (Freedman, 171). Le Guin’s denials suspiciously reflect a similar act of denial in her story. To walk away from Omelas is to deny participation of enforced misery, in any measure, for any reason. Walking away from Omelas is denial of participation, a moral protest solitarily achieved by means of suicide, a symbolic

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" demonstrates how happiness can’t exist without moral sacrifice through its use of symbol. The child being kept alone in a locked room underneath the most beautiful building of the city is a symbol of how someone’s happiness in Omelas depends entirely on that child’s misery: "they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships…depends wholly on this child’s abominable misery" (246). This passage makes it clear that happiness can only occur if Omelas’ citizens act like they constantly forget the child’s existence and let it "live" in its constant suffering. It’s evident that this symbol illustrates the delicate relation between happiness and moral sacrifice.

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 short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin the theme is that in order to be truly happy, one must stand up for what’s right, even if it means leaving everything that they know. Society creates traditions and ways of thinking that are not easy for everyone to follow. In Omelas, the citizens have the choice to ignore the suffering of a child locked in a cellar, or leave the life and the city they are familiar with. The people of Omelas must ask themselves whether it is better for a child to suffer for the city’s happiness and wealth, or should the city suffer, just to give the child a shot at happiness? It is ironic because Omelas is a

From the beginning of time, society has made the “moral” perspective the desired response or reaction to all situations and scenarios. The term moral means concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior, and the integrity or dishonesty of human character. To be morally sound, one must address the true meaning and purpose of morality. In the story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” citizens often leave due to the reality of their society. The ones who walk away from Omelas are cowards, not “moral” heroes of any manner. By leaving Omelas the former residents are abandoning the child to suffer in Omelas, its bitter reality, which involves no one changing the course of its life.

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.

Le Guin cannot or will not elaborate on any of the details about Omelas ' happiness but, she has no issue describing its horrors in detail from the mops "with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads" (Le Guin 866) to the "eh-haa, eh-haa" (Le Guin 866) noise that the captive child hidden beneath the city makes at night. She does not allow any wiggle room for the reader, who was responsible for creating Omelas, to imagine anything that might mitigate or rationalize the child 's misery. The author points out that one thing that the people of Omelas do not have is guilt, but behind this seemingly flawless city’s outward appearance, the community knowingly and willingly inflicts horrible suffering on an innocent child out of their own selfishness to ensure that they can live free of any pain or misery. Perhaps the people of Omelas are without a conscience.

From a close look at the current situation in the world - globalization is drawing more and more countries, and on the other hand, more and more are getting further from each other in terms of life level. In the story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" Ursula LeGuin reminds her readers that walking away from a problem is not a solution of it. Omelas’ well-being in some supernatural way is associated with the life of one child, who is caring a lonely existence in a dark basement. However, citizens of this city did not dare to change lives or try to come to the child with a gentle word. Otherwise, the happiness for the whole city would be over. At the same time, all the people of the city knew this child. The author raises many humanitarian questions that will influence the civilization’s future survival: will people do something about a problem or keep walking away and enjoy their happiness for someone’s suffering?

Ursula le guin's the ones who walk away from Omelas brought us an issue about happiness: could the happiness built on the suffering of the other be called as happiness? morally speaking, this utilitarianism mind-set of majority's interest over the sacrifice of individuals idea is wrong because human beings can not be evaluated like an object: the life of every individual is meaningful and it is the freedom of himself to decide his own destiny. however, in the daily practice, we find that people keep calculating the strength and weakness in order to achieve the best outcome. unfortunately, we have to reluctantly admit that life is a trade-off itself.

It is safe to say that most people in the world want one thing, happiness. Many men, women, and children will go through great lengths to find this cherished feeling, but how far is too far? In the fictional short stories "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin both have a different belief on what way to obtain happiness for their communities, but are in the similar lines of the need to harm one individual for the contentment of the others. In "The Lottery" the community joins together for their annual gamble of life where, families each go pull a ticket out of the black box to then discover who will be the one stoned to death for the good of everyone's crops. In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" although they cherish life dearly they hide a unperfect child locked away in the dark, underneath the beautiful Omelas buildings in a basement. Its sole purpose is to be hungry, dirty, and miserable for if this child were to ever feel happiness, the people of Omelas would not. Although the two stories use different methods to acquire their happiness they both believe with the harming of others they obtain their happiness.

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 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

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

The utopian society fabricated by Ursula LeGuin in her short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” appears, before the reader is introduced to its one inherent imperfection, to be ideal to a point of disbelief. Even the narrator doubts that her account of this utopia, despite considering the allowances given to the reader to add or remove certain aspects of the society in an attempt to render a utopia fashioned to individual desire, is a believable one. Interestingly, it is not until one final detail of Omelas is revealed, that of the boy who is kept in isolation in wretched conditions so that the people of Omelas may recognize happiness, that the existence of the

Therefore, happiness seems to be at the expense of justice. “The folks were not simple folk, though they were happy” (1312). They would not use the word “cheer” anymore because they weren’t cheerful (1312), but yet all smiles would become archaic (1312). They didn’t have slaves or swords nor did they use their people as barbarians (1312). Yet their society, rules, and laws were especially less complex, but the people of Omelas “were not less complex than us” (1312). “The trouble was encouraged by sophisticates considering happiness rather than being stupid” (1312). Their children were happy, mature and intelligent; perhaps happiness is based on what is neither necessary nor destructive. Omelas strikes some as all smiles and good people. The people of the Omelas have guilt, and the joy they have is built on successful slaughter. What swells the hearts of Omelas is the boundless, generous and magnanimous triumph in souls of all men and against some other enemy.