Similarities Between Snowpiercer And The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Have you ever read a story or watched a movie that has made you question the dangers of social inequality? In both Snowpiercer and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas are both pieces of fiction that follow the idea of social inequality as well as sacrifice. Both explore these ideas through the theme of sacrifice.

Firstly, Snowpiercer and the Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas share a theme of sacrifice. “The perfectly correct number of human beings all in their proper places all adding up to what? Humanity. The train is the world, we the humanity” (Joon-ho, p.103). In Snowpiercer, Curtis must sacrifice people whom he lived with for years to lead a rebellion against the social classes of the train. The higher social class people in the front

As a result, all the passengers on the train would die including Curtis who lead the revolution. This decision to blow up the train came from the fact that the inequality on the train was too large to overturn and due to the apocalypse, that occurred in the final scene. The truth was that Curtis thought that if “we control the engine, we control the world” (Le Guin, p.12) and that taking it over would allow him to overturn the inequality. This was clearly impossible as it had already gone on for years and the second that Curtis and the people from the tail turned their backs, the people from the front would likely attack in an alternative revolution. The idea of blowing up the train was the final and ultimate turning point in the long oppression of the people of the tail section. The act of blowing up the train is an inference that the people from the tail section were oppressed enough to the point that they were willing to give up absolutely everything for a chance of a better life. In The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, the sacrifice comes in the form of people who choose to walk away from the city of Omelas. These people recognize the sacrifice of the child and can no longer live with the guilt and moral conflict that comes with knowing their happiness depends on the suffering of one innocent