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How Does Omelas Relate To The Allegory Of The Cave

1057 Words5 Pages

Eli Martinez
September 14, 2016

Imagine a country in which the only emotions you feel are joy and happiness but underneath all of this lies a terrible fact. The story Those who walk away from Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuin tells of all this and it can greatly be compared to The Allegory of the cave by Plato, The book 1984 by George Orwell and to The United States of America in many ways. First of all the story about Omelas tells of a city state where everyone is happy and people live in harmony among one another but what the reader does not know until further in the story is that underneath all this is a sad truth about how the citizens of Omelas keep innocent children who are thought of as defective underneath the castle in a cellar where the only reality that they know is the reality of living in a cellar with nothing to do and very malnourished. This is a great example of how plato 's Allegory of the cave relates to this story of Omelas because it relates to the people who are kept in a cave in plato 's story and they only know the life given to them in that cave. In other words they only know about that false reality that they are living in and to them there is nothing else. Plato then goes on to describe of how those people are enlightened when one is taken out of the cave and brought into the outside world they are shown the real reality and “enlightened”. If one of the people is enlightened he or she will be motivated to help those in the cave …show more content…

In conclusion the story Those who walk away from Omelas is a great example of how many people live a false reality and as soon as one person is enlightened he/she will do everything they can to enlighten their brethren. This is also a great example on how many societies don 't try and fix their problems but rather push them to the side and forget about them thinking that they will never cause problems but that does not work because sooner or later something will be done about it in order to bring forth a change in

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