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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Literary Analysis

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“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” Theme Essay Imagine a world where everyone in the city is happy and their happiness depends on one child's suffering. In “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” author Ursula K. Le Guin shares the description of the city of Omelas. Le Guin describes a beautiful city where people live in a society full of discrete happiness. Through her use of imagery and narrative style, Le Guin reveals the cruel truth about happiness and how making one suffer for the joy of thousands is not worth it. Le Guin uses imagery to prove that not everyone is truly happy when they know the depressing truth. Le Guin uses unhappy imagery to highlight the fact happiness is an illusion and that not everyone is truly happy in Omelas: “But …show more content…

Le Guin uses an inner monologue to show the true colors of the town. When the author writes ”Happiness is based on just discrimination of what is necessary”(2), it is clear that she’s suggesting that making one child suffer to make up for their need for happiness is justified for some, but for others it isn’t worth knowing the truth. In the second part of the story, Le Guin uses narrative style to prove that sadness and dreadfulness aren’t worth thousands of people being happy. Le Guin uses inner monologue to show how people are not truly free. When the author writes, ”They know that they, like the child, are not free”(4), this is explaining how like the child they are also impelled and threatened with the happiness of thousands. Le Guin uses imagery to show the people who can’t tolerate living in Omelas when they learn about the child’s neglect, walking into the darkness. When the author states, “They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back”(4). This shows how some people would rather leave into the dark unknown instead of staying at Omelas after seeing the child and knowing the city’s happiness is based on the child’s

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