Leguin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Nothing in the world is perfect. In The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, LeGuin Ursula shows how Omelas is a pictured a utopia, but there is its one flaw in their basement. LeGuin’s persuades throughout the story of Omelas that wherever there is light there is darkness. Within The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, LeGuin uses multiple points of views and would sometimes ask the reader questions midway through the story. Through the word choices and diction used, LeGuin makes the sentence powerful.

LeGuin says “Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How to describe the citizens of Omelas?”, this line uses an uncommon way to phrase the sentence. By having an uncommon sentence structure, the reader is now put into thinking that they are apart of the story. It is stated “All smiles have become archaic,” in which the word isn’t normally used in common stories. The serenity makes the readers view Omelas as the perfect society that is full of happiness.

A few of the words she used were “frightened,” “disgusted,” “festered,” and “excrement.” All of the words used to express towards the child had a negative connotation. Comparatively, in the introduction of The Ones Who Walk Away for Omelas, there were words used such as “merry,” “bright,” ‘cheer,” “happiness,” and “decorous.” Accordingly, the words used at the beginning of the story had positive connotations, creating the thought of a fairy tale like town to the reader. Through the connotation of these words, it shows how LeGuin views the treatment of the child as something dark and sinister, almost evil. LeGuin had shifted the imagery unexpectedly from a pleasant, happy town into a dark and horrible town. At the beginning of the story, it starts that the people of Omelas “celebrate is that of life,” into depending on “this child’s abominable