The Price of Paradise: The Cost of Happiness in LeGuin’s Omelas In Ursula K. LeGuin’s fantasy short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, LeGuin uses symbolism to illustrate that a utopia can never be achieved and rhetorical questions and imagery to show that there is no happiness without sadness. In the short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin, the author, uses symbolism to illustrate that a utopia can never be achieved. For example, on the third page, the Narrator explains that all of the “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 makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kind weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (LeGuin 3). …show more content…
Furthermore, readers visualize how one's misery can be the reason for happiness for many others. From this quote, readers can envision how without misery, there is no joy in life in today’s society. Additionally, when the Narrator was talking about the child who suffers, they brought up that “if the child were brought up into the sunlight.cleaned and fed and comforted.all the prosperity and beauty in Omelas would wither and be destroyed” (LeGuin 4). The phrase “all the prosperity and beauty in Omelas would wither and be destroyed” has a negative implication in dealing with the drawbacks of a Utopian society. Since the narrator shows how if the people of Omelas were to help the child, all of the good things about Omelas would disappear, they are conveying the message that without negative things, there are no positive things. This contrast is further emphasized through the symbolism of sunlight and the child’s confinement, where sunlight represents hope, freedom, and life, while the child’s confinement represents suffering and