1. Who are the stakeholders? The stakeholders in the story are the people of Omelas who chose happiness over the suffering of one child and the child who suffers, locked up in a room with no access to proper care and sufficient food. Only a few of the townspeople get to socialize with the child but only to the extent that they gawk at his or her presence. 2. What are the ethical issues? The primary ethical dilemma of the story is quite obvious: whether it is right that the child be left to suffer and sacrifice for the benefit of the rest of society. In the story, so long as the child is suffering, the rest of people in the town can live happily. If the child was to be relieved from the suffering, the rest of the town would not be able to live a happy life. Therefore, the issue is whether it is right to let one suffer for the benefit of society as a whole Another issue is that all of the people in the town are aware of the child’s suffering and his or her presence and circumstance. Some of them chose to leave the town due to conscience and yet, they did nothing to remedy the child’s suffering. The rest, however, chose to stay in the town and disregard the fact that one of them is suffering. They chose to ignore the situation while others, unfortunately, even look at the child with disgust and felt no remorse whatsoever. (Klinger, 2015) 3. Who is the most unethical in the story (if anyone)? In context, everyone in society is unethical, be it the ones who chose to ignore
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.
As previously stated, the narrator is the one who describes and foreshadows the scapegoat use of the child. The narrator described a lack of guilt in Omelas which leads to the idea of scapegoatism. Once the narrator reveals the child and the harsh conditions in which it lives, the narrator also reveals uses of the child. In fact, the narrator makes the reader aware of the scapegoat by stating, “They all know it has to be there,” (252). After the narrator explains how the people of Omelas know the child has to remain in its tortured cellar, he/she explains that their city and its beauty depends on it (252). The depiction of needing the child for the ultimate happiness of the utopia basically describes using him/her as the person to blame. Basically, the child is giving the people of Omelas someone to blame for all the minor flaws, so that they can continue their happy life. Lastly, the narrator explains the theme of ignorance being bliss when he/she describes, “Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there,” (252). Since the narrator tells the reader that not everyone goes to see the child, he/she is telling the audience that some choose to not see it. If they don’t see the child suffering then they can pretend it is not, and they can
People did not care enough to help the girl who was dying. When the killer was caught, he told the police that he “figured nobody would do anything thing to help”(Wainwright 2). People also did not care enough to even talk to the police after the murder. Lieutenant Jacobs said that “there are people over there who saw everything, and there hasn’t been a peep out of them yet” (Wainwright), which shows that people not only don’t care if someone is dying, but they also do not care if what they saw could help the police catch the killer of the woman. What the killer said to the police shows that he knows that this is what most people would do if faced with the same
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.
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
This story is not a typical one when it comes to the topic of child abuse. Most people would think that they would hear about starvation, or beatings, or sexual molestation. But child abuse is harming a child whether it be mentally or physically and forcing a child to live with something like this can be severely mentally damaging. (Hopper)
In this assignment, I will be talking about what stakeholders mean and the different components of the key stakeholders based on two organisations: Debenhams and Water Aid. A stakeholder is when a person shows a keen interest in the activities of a business, directly or indirectly.
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
The central character in which the story takes off upon is Mitchell Stephens. He is drawn into this case by his own anger. He has his own sense of suffering and confusion toward his own daughter. Stephens is torn by his urge to save her and his fear that he can't possibly do so. He recalls the flashback of his little girl as a toddler at a near death experience and him as her father while singing to her, held her life in his own hands prepared to perform an emergency tracheotomy. And in that way, Stephens' own experience bonds together with the nightmare of those pain stricken parents: the ultimate unbearable burden of caring for children where strength will be tested beyond its limits. Stephen's own daughter in whom he loves dearly has been taken away from him although she is not dead; she is practically gone out of his life. He is pissed off, "enough rage and helplessness, your love turns to steamy piss." (101). Stephen is set to find the cause, something or someone to blame for their misfortunes and to rage against whatever forces took their child, "I don't know if it was the Vietnam war…I don't know
Like Death From Child Abuse . . . And No One Heard, the outside world does nothing to help out a small child suffering from various forms of abuse. The few people who took notice were David’s teachers and the school nurse. Yet it took them a considerable amount of time to
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
suffers horribly so that the rest can be happy” (Brooks). The child’s pain and loneliness is a
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
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" Ursula LeGuin is raising the moral dilemma of justice vs. happiness. The happiness of the citizens in Omelas depends on the suffering of a child locked in a closet. She briefly describes the contrast between the child’s situation and the citizens’ position, portraying a moral dilemma, which is when you have to choose to do one of two equally unpleasant things.