Theme Of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

“If the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specific and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain”? This is a quote from the American philosopher William James that largely inspired the story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” written by Ursula K. Le Guin. Ursula though born in California, currently resides in Portland Oregon. Her mother was a writer and her father an anthropologist. She thought of the name Omelas when she saw a road sign for Salem Oregon.

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

The focus of this story is laid upon the child who is kept in the damp room without windows in a basement. He is filthy and devoid of any sunlight in the room being removed from any social contact. On the contrary, some of the citizens come and peer at the child to see who brings them a sort of joy and comfort in their lives. “Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children...depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (Guin 3). While adults accept the situation with the child, little children come feeling rage and shock as well as considering how to help the imprisoned. At this stage, they feel despair and compassion to him; however, they can not exchange their beautiful life for the sake of one child.

There are times when the suffering of some can bring greater happiness for others. A small example, would be when one individual loses a job, another can gain a job. However, this is demonstrated unfairly in the city of Omelas. Locked in a damp, dark basement exists a child bereft of all love, care, and opportunity. "It has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect" (260). Its ' gender is left unidentified to emphasize its ' destitute and feeble state. The child embodies all the hallmarks of extreme poverty, including the lack of proper nutrition, health, education, as well as poor economic and social standing. "The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes" (261). "They all know [the child] is there, all the people

The perception of reality and morality differs from individual to individual, from community to community. The different cultures throughout the world provide breeding grounds to many different kinds of ethical values and societies. In The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, the author Ursula Leguin, creates a society that may be perceived as corrupt and unfair, yet is not too different from our own. Omelas is neither a “city of happiness” nor a Utopia; it is a city of paradox, of false freedom and desperation. The people of Omelas live lives full of happiness and comfort, over a rotten foundation of an abused and abandoned child. Yet Leguin sympathizes with the ones who choose to stay in Omelas for she believes that they are helpless, stuck in the paradox of moral obligations and moral values. The Omeleans stay for they live in denial, creating a reality different from ours. To them, they either believe it is truly moral to uphold the community, with the sacrifice of one child, or they live in Omelas as an obligation, infinitely appreciative for the child sacrifice. The ones who leave however, do not want to feel obligation, to rely on this child for happiness. They want to be responsible for their own happiness. Unfortunately, similar to the Omeleans, Americans consume hundreds of pounds of meat a day; hundreds of cows, chicken and pigs brutally handled and abused for the pleasure of our taste buds.

When people come to visit the tortured child, most feel powerless in creating change because they know that their happiness and their beautiful city relies on the agony of the child. Nonetheless, some walk away from the city of Omelas as a testament to their disapproval of the circumstances in Omelas. The people who “walk ahead into the darkness, and do not come back” are running from indirect suffering, meaning they are running from the emotional guilt as a result of the child suffering (Le Guin

The people in the city constantly dehumanize the child, acting as though he/ she is just another useful tool in their society. While they have very few laws in Omelas, they have a rule concerning the child. “The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.” Furthermore, they kick and stare and even the narrator refers to the child as “it”.

The impression of such blissfulness within the people alludes to a sense of goodness and the people seem to lack the gravity of any real pain or intricacies a natural human would face in the real world. The depiction of Omelas being a wonderland of all things simplistic—stitched neatly together to perfection is not as it appears, for there is a flaw that furnishes this creation. Upon the city of delight there’s a child selected from the rest of the population who functions as a sacrifice to rest of its people—who lives in squalor, misery and solitude away from the rest of society. This child is a token that allows the rest of the city to live in peace and be free while the child is imprisoned. Being free in the city of Omelas comes at a value and the price is a young child.

It is revealed to readers that all of the citizens of Omelas know of this child being stored in a murky dirty cellar. Due to this fact and how the people of Omelas do nothing to help the child verifies the existence of evil in the new story world the narrator has crafted (Posella 3). Additionally, this is an unmistakable act of evil and selfishness made by the people of Omelas to let such a horrid event occur, the suffering of one child for the happiness of all, which is the devil’s bargain in this story (Scoville 2016). Thus, the main inquiry concerning this is why must the town of Omelas be built this way. One reason that the narrator abandons an ideal perfect story world and goes into one full of evil instead is due to the notion that evil is interesting to individuals and that readers want to hear about such brutality like a child be inhumanely treated (Scoville 2016). However, this idea is overly generalized and does not apply to everyone (Posella 3). Another reason may be that, in relation to real life, even though the world may seem perfect, people still suffer. While the majority are aware of this, they still continue on with their lives as long as they

This is, however, just a picture of life above ground in Omelas. Beneath the city lives a nameless child who knows only darkness and squalor. This child, of unspecified gender, is chosen from the population to exist as a living sacrifice that

The reader initially views those who stay as monsters involved only in their own self-interest as explored when Le Guin writes, “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” (867). This passage first shows the interactions between the villagers of Omelas and the child. This passage makes the villagers seem like cruel, sadistic, torturers, but Le Guin vehemently refutes this singular, one-dimensional portrayal of the villagers early in the story before the reader even uncovers the secret of the child when Le Guin writes, “They were not simple folk, you see” (865). While simple, this quote explains to the reader that not only are the characters in this story not simple, but to a larger extent the world in which Omelas inhabits and the world in which the reader inhabits are also not simple.

In this paper, I argue that the story “The ones who walk away from Omelas” does not express a scream because the people of Omelas who continue to stay do not satisfy what

The author describes the arrangement in which the citizens of Omelas have made in exchange for their city of sublime existence. With whom the agreement is made is irrelevant, but the terms create the deep ethical dilemma. Within the city, in a basement, there lives a child. The child is ten years old, and is described as malnourished, underdeveloped, and scared. The child is in a closet, with dirt floors, and is fed a small amount of cornmeal and water every day.

Theme can be defined as the subject of a talk, piece of writing, a person’s thoughts, or a topic. Often, themes are found in novels or stories, fake or fiction, every work containing a central idea that carries a novel and gives it reason to exist. One novel that exemplifies a strong arguable theme is Lord of the Flies by William Golding. As described by E.L Epstein, “The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature.”