“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is a short story written by Ursula Le Guin. The story paints a vivid picture, in remarkable detail, of a fairytale-like city called Omelas where people are joyful, passionate, intelligent, and always celebrating. To give us a reason to believe the idea of how such a place could exist, she goes to describe beyond the people and their attitudes, to talk about what exists and does not exist in the world of Omelas that allows its people to be so. The story takes a grim twist when one of the sources of this city’s happiness is revealed to be the abominable misery of a child. It is said that there is a small, naked child locked away in a dark, broom closet-sized room in a cellar under Omelas, and all the people of the city are aware of this, starting from when they are children between the age of eight and twelve. The terms are that freeing the child or comforting it or speaking a single kind word to the child would mean the absolute end of the beauty and prosperity of Omelas.
Written excellently, the author talks directly to the reader in first person as she narrates this dark tale she has concocted, frequently asking the reader the same rhetorical question throughout the story: “Do you believe? Do you accept…?”. The author craftily states assumptions a reader would make right after she describes a trait of Omelas only to banish them. The subject matter of the story is very deep and makes one reflect on the qualities and attributes that exist in our lives and truly ponder whether the absence of one leads to the presence of another. But more than that, the story is a useful tool to bring to light a very difficult question we’ve discussed in class before. In the words of the author, is it right “to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one”?
Reading the story, it made me wonder about whether the claims the author makes on our current way of life is in fact true. Here’s the very passage that somewhat alarmed me.
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. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.
“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”
from The Wind’s Twelve Quarters: Short Stories
by Ursula Le Guin
Part of it definitely rings true. I can easily think of many instances of movies, TV shows and books that are part of our modern culture which prove that we need the introduction of some conflict or evil for it to be interesting. A story without any such “negative” traits or with a happy ending is instantly considered boring and sappy. As for the remaining part of the paragraph, can you describe a happy man?
Back to the main purpose of the story, what can one do in a situation where the price of your city’s happiness, prosperity, merriment is being paid by cruel imprisonment of a child? If I were a citizen of Omelas, what would my options be? What would the impact of each decision be?
- Free the child.
It must be the right thing to do, there is righteousness in saving the child regardless of the cost. The people of Omelas can slowly but eventually grow accustomed to their new lives that may be less convenient but can now live with the satisfaction and freedom from guilt knowing this new life of theirs isn’t built on the foundation of a child’s misery. - Let things be the way they have been.
Would I dare be responsible for the downfall of a city, become the reason that thousands of people have lost joy in their lives so that a child, who most likely will never be able to fit in or be at ease with the outside world, gets its freedom? Freeing the child would do more harm than good considering the number of people that would be impacted. The terms insist that “their 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 kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery”. - Walk out of town.
This seems more of an avoidance tactic. Running away from this ethical dilemma does not help the child nor does it help the people of Omelas. These people show that they simply cannot stand to live and “reap the rewards” from the abuse inflicted on the child. Though it is a gesture of their choice to no longer be an active bystander to the situation, the ones who walk away will still forever possess the knowledge of the injustice that continues to take place in the world they used to belong to, with or without them.
I personally think that the right thing to do would be option 1 for the reasons described above, even if it impacts everyone in the city, because it should. I don’t think it should be a matter forgotten in the minds of the citizens as they carry on and celebrate their lives. I don’t think it’s enough that they be made aware of the “inconvenient truth” but they must also acknowledge it in some way.
While the author does an excellent job of conveying this ethical dilemma through her creation of an imaginary world, it is hard to digest the fact that millions of people currently go through a similar situation where part of the society benefits from the use of technology while the rest suffers from the same cause. I’m talking about the “social credit” system that was developed and implemented in China. This social credit scheme leverages facial recognition, body scanning and location tracking to assign a score out of 800. Depending on which part of the scale you’re at, you either reap its benefits or suffer its consequences. According to an article I read, “penalties range from losing the right to travel by plane or train, social media account suspensions and being barred from government jobs”. This situation is similar to what was discussed in the story because it puts us in a position to determine whether how things are must remain so for the greater good or does it require intervention to rescue those being tormented by the system.
Rumsha Rafi CP373 Blog 