Examples Of Scapegoating In The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Ryan Cochrane
Mr. Guasetlla
English 21, Red 4
12, January 2021
Self-conscious power
What people miss is that scapegoating is responsible for every genocide and or terrible situation to ever have happened! People blame others in order to feel better about the problem they face. This is especially common in smaller groups in which many members may have not even been a part of the problem, but still end up getting blamed and treated differently. People blame/Scapegoat others in order to feel a sense of being a higher power and to feel happier about the overall situation. Scapegoating is used to blame and dehumanize others in an unknown group to give themselves a sense of heroism and to neglect their ongoing problems to make their life more joyful.

Both stories show how scapegoating is used to keep power from others and also maintain a happier and better life. Different forms of scapegoating are used. Letting people suffer for their benefit is another way of scapegoating. People choose to be bystanders to ongoing horrible situations just so they gain a small amount of happiness. Sometimes people are allowed to make a good decision but allow themselves to scapegoat another person just to keep themselves higher up and happier. This also goes deeper than just people scapegoating others in a group. Some stood against this scapegoating, but their group was too big and powerful. There was nothing they could do. Which shows how dangerous scapegoating can be. We can see this in the dystopian story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'' by Ursula Le Guin when she states, “They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do.” (Le Guin 5) This shows how many people in the larger group can feel that scapegoating is wrong. In the story. The civilians had to scapegoat a child and put him through hell just so that they could live the “perfect” life. Even though they knew it was wrong, they could do nothing because the higher power was too strong to rebel against. Also, helping the child would

In the story, there is one main scapegoat in the character Snowball. Snowball was a past leader who was kicked out of Animal Farm, and now without him society is poorly run. The new leader, Napoleon, scapegoats Snowball to make others believe he is behind all the bad things that happen. But, the undereducated aren’t smart enough to realize the horrible things that are going on. So they scapegoat him to make themselves believe everything is going perfectly. Because society is poorly run, the animals soon face a shortage of food and other necessities. Things go wrong on the farm and instead of taking accountability for these problems, they scapegoat snowball and blame him for all their problems, even though it did not correlate with him. The animals are shown scapegoating Snowball when they say, “Do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!” (Orwell 25). This was the first intense where Snowball was scapegoated for something he didn’t do. The windmill failed when it was built and instead of taking ownership of his mistake, he scapegoated snowball instead. This shows how people don't take accountability when they make mistakes and choose to scapegoat others in order to hold their accountability and ownership. Snowball starts to also get blamed by