The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas Essay

The book, Reviving Ophelia, is about the hardships girls go through when they are growing up and trudging through puberty. As the author Mary Pipher states it, adolescent girls tend to lose their “true selves” in order to fit in and comply with the standards that society sets for women. Pipher, a practicing therapist, uses her own case studies to show how pressures put on girls forces them to react in often damaging ways. In most case studies she tells the audience how she helped these girls heal and regain control of their lives. It seems that her primary goal is to warn people of what certain effects can have on girls and what not to do. The one thing that Pipher tends to overlook is what parents can do right to raise healthy

Many believe that the human race is inherently evil, and the story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas shows this with jarring detail. Ursula LeGuin tells the story of a seemingly perfect city named Omelas and its residents that know nothing but contentment and peace. However, this is offset by the suffering of one child, that, if freed from its prison, would jeopardize the happiness of the rest of the city. Therefore, the theme of Omelas is morality, which is shown through LeGuin’s use of imagery, “man vs. society” conflict, and utopia.

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”

In the second half of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, a child was introduced. No one knew if it was a he or she, it had no name, no clothing, no one was even allowed to speak to it. This child was stuck in a room to be tortured, in the city of happiness, Omelas. This child’s suffering was the only thing keeping this town’s joy alive. More specifically, Le Guin wrote, “...their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their markers, even the abundance of

It is most certainly okay to let a child sit in a closet, malnourished and unsocial, for the general population's happiness. Most people would say no, but in the town of Omelas, this is how they are able to obtain happiness. There are some contradicting opinions in Omelas, as some accept this fact and others can not bear it. Throughout this town, guilt is felt by all; how different people deal with it is what differs among the citizens of Omelas. Ursula Le Guin portrays the contradicting effects of guilt on different people by demonstrating how some flee from the cause of guilt while others bury it in their mind.

Self preservation and personal comfort, another consistent theme throughout the story is continuously perpetuated as generation-after-generation of residents are introduced to the unspeakable treatment of this helpless child. Ironically when first exposed to the atrocity, most children were more disgusted and outraged by the horrible predicament of the child than the adults who by all accounts should have been responsible for its protection. This obvious moral role reversal signifies a purity and innocence that is often present in a child’s perspective that is untarnished by corrupt societal teachings and norms. Additionally, the comparison between the moral integrity of

Ophelia begins the play as an average girl growing up in a place that would predispose her to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Her father’s murder did not drive her insane, but shook an easily shaken system. “First her father slain: Next your son gone; and he most violent author Of his own just remove…. Poor Ophelia Divided from herself and her fair judgment, Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts” (Shakespeare).

It’s quite gruesome. Some can’t handle the wrong being done to this child. A few individuals begin to think that if their society lets this happen what else is wrong in Omelas? Is it not as perfect as it seems? They can’t deal with the fact that their happiness relies on the “child’s abominable misery” (3).

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

The ones who walk away from Omelas believe in equality and fairness among their city. They believe that it is not fair for the citizens to act like they are living a perfect life when they know there is someone that has been suffering, trapped in a room with no human contact for what seems like a countless number of years. When they decide to walk away from Omelas, it is not because they are acting cowardly or trying to avoid helping the young child. These people make this decision to help themselves. Those outcasts who walk away not knowing where they are going are humans that cannot accept the fact that they have been so happy while another person in their same city is miserable.

All of the narrator's questions invite the reader to place ;himself in the position of the people of Omelas. Do you need this to make you happy? Then you may have it. Once the reader begins to enjoy the city and begins to see its happiness as a good thing, then the reader, like the adolescents in the story, must be shown that on which the happiness depends. Readers must face the question of what they would be willing to sacrifice for happiness. In Omelas, the people have no guilt so they are able to sacrifice the child for their happiness with no remorse because they are happy.

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

After being told of the horrors that were going on just below their feet to a young child, the people of Omelas had their lives altered. At that point in their lives, they were forced to make the moral decision on what do to. They could either remain in the city and thrive off of the suffering of the child, or they could leave the utopia and wander off into the unknown and never return to the city of their birth. For many, it is implied that this is an easy decision, they accept the suffering as beneficial to society and go on living their lives. They accept the notion that this child truly does prevent the downfall of

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.