Ursula Le Guin in the Story \"The

Ursula Le Guin

In the story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," author Ursula Le Guin has created a dystopia wherein the majority of the population lives in eternal states of joy and happiness. These people have to encounter no distress, no hard work, and no discouragement. Every part of the person's life is designed so that they know nothing but perfect happiness and joy. For those who live in Omelas, life is completely perfect. They are all young and happy and healthy. Their children are never underfed. Their harvests always come in on time and in abundance. In short, for the majority of the people of Omelas, there is nothing on this Earth which they have anything to complain about. However, beneath the joy of the majority population is the secret of the people and the town, the knowledge that one person must have absolute torment throughout their lives in order to make the lives of all other others so wonderful. The theme of the story becomes how the people allow this one person to suffer in order to please them and how, although this is a work of fiction, often people in the real world allow others to suffer in order to make their own lives better.

There is no government to speak of in Omelas. There are no authorities, at least none that are clearly discussed in the story. In the town, there are neither governmental nor religious heads; no one to tell the people what it is they are supposed to do. "Religion yes, clergy no" (Le Guin 3). It is as though the community has established a set of rules and has created something that is so perfect that the rules do not need to be enforced. There are no violations and thus there is no need to punish either from a legal or religious perspective. Further, there are also no soldiers, no one to enforce the rules of the city but themselves. For those who are not satisfied by food or sex or sunlight, there is a narcotic called drooz. This changes the feeling of sadness or dissatisfaction into a euphoria which serves to heighten the experience of the various joys surrounding the population. The effect is to silence anyone who may have questions about the one negative part of life in Omelas.

In a basement in one of the homes is a child that may or may not be male. This child lives in abject horror, with little food or sunlight, no one to love them or even to speak a kind word, and no one to even keep the child clean. Every person in Omelas is made aware of the child in the basement and each also is forced to understand why the child is there. "Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand 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 mistery" (Le Guin 5). There are those who feel guilt and then let it pass, allowing themselves to feel even more joy so that the child's sacrifice will not be in vain.

Some of them, eventually, become so affected by what they saw in the child's basement that they determine to leave Omelas forever, always alone and always on a short notice. Only those with a sense of guilt over the child will ever leave. Yet, they only walk away, rather than do anything to help the child. Those that think about removing it rationalize that it is past saving. The others will allow themselves to rationalize their conduct and the presence of the child in order to continue their lives of abject happiness. In essence, all of the people in Omelas, those that stay and those that leave, are responsible for the child.