The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Literary Analysis

Damon Knight’s “The Country of the Kind” follows a narrator who the audience at first knows little about, who lives in a society that is different from the norm, but is also initially left ambiguous. This sense of the unknown exists up until the narrator stumbles upon a pamphlet which opens up new viewpoints to the reader. The pamphlet serves to create three new perspectives in particular, all of which significantly shift the reader’s understanding of the story. First, it gives the reader a chance to understand the narrator and sympathize with him. Second, it offers a new perspective on society and their overall conception of what defines a utopia. The third and final perspective is that of the people who live within this society, and their interactions with the main characters. These three new perspectives prove to be formative in understanding the main character, his interactions with other characters in the story, and the role of society.

In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" author Ursula K. Le Guin uses the utopian society of Omelas to symbolically highlight the ugly and unsavory state of the human condition. The stories unidentified narrator paints a colorful picture of Omelas and ironically describes its residents as happy, joyous and not at all barbaric. Although Le Guin describes Omelas as a delightful even whimsical place that affords its citizens “…happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of the of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weather of their skies”; we come to discover just the opposite (5). At its core we find a

In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” the citizens live in a utopian society, or at least they want Omelas to be a utopian society. If you go in depth of the story, you will realize that Omelas is not so perfect at all, and their surroundings are gilded. Omelas is dystopian that shows the suffering of one for the happiness of others. It is summer time in Omelas, and the city is having a festival. The festival is full of happy people, and everything is perfect. The happiness of the city of Omelas is just a coating for the suffering of a ten-year-old child. The child is locked away in a basement without sunlight, a little bit of food and no happiness at all, and this is all for the town happiness. Many people in this gilded society feel guilty

The author made the story sound in the beginning as if the city was a good and peaceful town. She describes the town as a very nice place, without laws, where everything and everybody was good and fine. This strategy made the book even more interesting to read because I was totally waiting for something else and definitely not the nasty truth of Omelas. This city has nothing of a good city or a good population.

In any society, Utopian or not, there will always be some form of suffering taking place. May it be sickness, hunger, war or poverty, suffering is one of the many negative conditions of living in a society. In Ursula Le Guins short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, suffering within the city has come to an end, thus allowing the citizens of Omelas to become happy. But, the happiness of the people and the beauty of the city come at a great cost. In a cold, damp basement in an unknown building, a naked child is subject to abuse and torture.

Ursula Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” depicts a fictional utopian society that appears to be perfect at the surface level. In a place with celebration, dancing, prosperity, and equality, life would seemingly be flawless; However, the happiness of this community is based upon a scapegoat child who is neglected, abused, and confined in a dark basement. The narrator, who is a citizen of Omelas, digs beneath the surface level of the utopian society to reveal the truth of the twisted community. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is centered around one major conflict; the sacrifice of a child’s life in return for happiness. This situation alone creates internal conflicts for all the citizens of Omelas.

At a certain extent, those living in Omelas who know about the child that suffers for their well being do bear a blame. Some people in the city are helpless due to the fear of losing the prosperity

This scene sets the stage for a glorious escape into ones own imagination as she leads the reader down the twisted, path of utopian discovery. The imagery of Omelas is striking in its beauty and easily captures the imagination as Le Guin effortlessly entangles the reader in the construction of her utopia and shows that Omelas has something tantalizing in it for everyone. Each street in the city has a specific genre of music that caters to ones specific taste. Children run “naked in the bright air” (1) through green fields of soft grass, and even the horses are ridden without a saddle or a bit to avoid causing them any sort of discomfort. There are no kings to rule over them, no slaves to serve them, no wars or rumors of wars to frighten them, the laws of the land are few and simple, and every person has their place in society.

After having read Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” I have come to question my understanding of what is morally correct, whether the needs of the collective should come over those of the individual, and what constitutes a good, justice society. A story about a child’s unnecessary, involuntary, perpetual plight of losing his liberty for the greater good of the group, it touches upon utopic life, utilitarianism, scapegoating, complacency, and responsibility. Is it justifiable to have someone—a child, no less—live in endless misery so that an entire city can live in happiness? Can an almost perfect society in which all but one are happy be a utopia?

“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is not a utopian story, but it assumes the reader is well aware of them. In acknowledging the foibles inherent to the genre, mainly the difficulty in describing an ideal society in a world where such a thing is still being argued and defined, it invites the reader to make his or her best attempt at filling in the gaps. Complicity established, the story puts a living price tag on this beautiful ideal, asking if such a thing could be justified. Most rational observers would say “No” and take the proffered option of walking away from the city, but this too is ultimately a shortsighted choice. Omelas cannot be merely ignored, it must be destroyed and remade, a responsibility that rests squarely on those it benefited.

Khanna discusses the changes in the genre of utopia when it is more rigidly established in ground rule of feminism. The outlook of difference, whether of species or of gender, undoes the separation and ranking so extensive in the dominant narrative of our literature even utopian narratives. It is no longer the generic tension of binary opposition, but the gendered search for difference that composes Le Guin's utopian venture. In "Omelas" readers are meant to see the suffering child behind the flute player's sensitive eyes, a summarization of the mythos of scared artist and, completely in this story, a recapitulation of binary oppositions within the dominant utopian

The citizens of Omelas are described as happy, non-violent, and intelligent. Everyone is considered equal in Omelas; there are no slaves or rulers. In Omelas, children run about naked, playing; 'merry women carry their babies"; and "tall young men wear.... flowers in their shining hair." The narrator also stresses that although the citizens are happy, they are not simple or naive; "they were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not

Omelas is a beautiful, thriving city filled with happy people around every corner; however, it has a dirty secret kept from the public’s eye—but not from their knowledge. A child is kept in a tiny room, with no light, in a basement. It is rarely fed and has to sit in its own waste. A child, who, “has not always live in the tool room and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice.” A child that, even if he got away from this life would never be happy again. Why does no one help him? Because of this child, everyone in Omelas is happy, and will always be happy, as long as there is one, the child, who suffers for the good of the city. Helping him would ruin the happiness of all. The only other option is to leave the city and expose

| |“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Ursula K. Le Guin (pp. 1311-1315) | | |

In the story Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and “The Ones Who Walk Away from