The narrator seems to find the dilemma at Omelas to be acceptable, as he calls those who leave “incredible” (6), saying that he “cannot describe it at all,” but “they seem to know where they are going” (7). The few that leave, leave without incident, in the dead of night never to return, as their quite protest, going “through the beautiful gates” and farmlands, “to a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness” (7). “To throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed,” Le Guin reasons (6). Knowing of the child “makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science” (6) it drives and inspires, gives compassion and robs the people of their innocence. “There is no vapid, irresponsible happiness” all the residents know that “they, like the child, are not free” from the “terrible justice of reality” (6)-that one human, just as important as any other, must be dehumanized for the democratic benefit of the majority.
Our narrator sympathizes with the citizens of Omelas, even going so far as to name the child’s plight as the source of all compassion in the town. Question Two: What is the narrator’s opinion of Omelas? It is indeed a utopia, for all except the suffering child (4-5). The city is beautiful, the weather and harvests are kind and abundant, and most everyone healthy (5), yet this is just the icing on the cake. The children are happy, and the adults, “mature, intelligent, passionate” (2), with no need for a hierarchal church or government (2-3). This insight is the definition of a utopia when everyone knows it, wars, slavery, and competition is not needed (2-3). The residents need not live simply-there can be all sorts of luxuries, wondrous technologies, drugs, beer, and orgies in the streets, because their happiness is not based on possessions, but rather, “a just discrimination of what is necessary,” “what is destructive,” and what is neither (2). Le Guin notes that the inhabitants are not “bland utopians,” not “simple folk,” nor “dulcet shepherds” (2). Omelas is a utopia, though not of the lifeless type that the word inspires. Question One: What is a utopia? Does Omelas meet the definition?
THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION PDF
PDF version, with an annotated copy of the text (1.3MB). The story of Omelas is a fascinating classic, and I recommend it for anyone who likes to think.Ī Critical Analysis of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” a short, fictional story by Ursula Le Guin.
The first entry in my new essays section.
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