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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

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“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin is a strong and enjoyable short story with numerous positive aspects. Perhaps the strongest of which is the underlying message. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” paints a vivid picture of society that almost everyone knows all too well. This specific society depends on the suffering of select groups of individuals in order for the rest of the world to feel happiness and enjoy life to the fullest. This society is reminiscent of the current society everyone lives in today. Each product people possess is the result of someone laboring to produce it and many more just like it. Within the story the select groups of individuals who must suffer are represented by a small child, scared and …show more content…

The narrator has seen the suffering of the small child, as most in the city have, and understands the issue and has left the city. It is believed that the narrator has left the city because, it is not uncommon that people have left the city after understanding the issues occurring within Omelas. “At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not in fact, go home at all…They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas.(784)” The story is written as if the narrator is explaining the hidden horrors of Omelas to someone who has never visited and desperately wanting that person to believe them as well. “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing...Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? (782-784)” While there is quite a bit of good aspects to the story, there are also issues. The most prominent one being the lack of plot development throughout the story. In the beginning the reader is introduced to the beautiful city of Omelas where everyone is enjoying life to the fullest and the immediately jumps to talking of the evils of society and then back to happiness. The story does this multiple times without a clue that it ever happened. In addition to the abrupt

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Many people of the city chose to leave the city, because they didn't believe in the act of hurting that child. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” (Guin pg 444)

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