Walk Away From Omelas How

¶ … Walk Away from Omelas

How would you like to live in utopia, a joyous, wonderful city where everyone is mature, intelligent, and passionate and living guilt-free. In Ursula K. Le Guin's story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," this utopian city of happiness and delight exists, and its name is Omelas. Everything about Omelas is pleasing, except for the dark secret that lies at the city's heart. The good fortune of the city's residents requires that one unfortunate child pay the price and live a life of continual suffering. "It has to be there," Le Guin writes. This paper will explore the moral question at the center of Le Guin's story -- is the utopia experienced by the residents of Omelas worth the suffering of the young boy. Those who make the choice to leave Omelas at the end of the story may not be making the perfect choice, but they are making a moral choice and the only one possible.

When the story opens, there is a festival in Omelas. Everyone is gathering at the Green Field meadow and the children are gathering for a horse race. It is a glorious day, and the perfection of the citizens of Omelas is difficult for the narrator to describe, it is so great. "Joyous! How is one to tell about joy?" The narrator exclaims, "How describe the citizens of Omelas?" They are happy, but not simple, and the narrator makes it abundantly clear that they are not "dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us." Le Guin soundly rejects that happiness is somehow equal to simplicity and even stupidity. Le Guin even encourages the reader to imagine their own utopia, their own Omelas. By the middle of the story, one cannot help but envy the residents. Add an orgy if you want, or a temple where the naked statues run around seducing everyone. The question, however, is, are you willing to pay the price?

When exposed to the truth of the tortured, suffering boy, the great majority of citizens, though shocked and disgusted by the sight of him, ultimately are able to come to terms with his existence and live out their lives in Omelas. "The all know it is there," Le Guin writes. "Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They know it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness... depend[s] wholly on this child's misery." They cannot plead ignorance, and each of them is culpable in the suffering of the child because of the benefit they receive, but not everyone sees it that way. "One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt," the narrator tells us. The citizens of Omelas have separated themselves from the suffering of they boy so that they can actually enjoy the lives they live. Like the biblical scapegoat, they have placed all of their sins -- the negative aspects of life -- upon the back of the child and set if off to where they can mostly forget about him. Each and every citizen in the town is taking part in a trade. They get to live lives of happiness and the boy continues to suffer -- he is the foundation upon which their utopian society is built, and the terms are strict. Even if they wanted to be kind, the rules forbid it, lest get respite, even for a second, from his "abominable misery." The people are prevented from doing anything to try and make the child's life better, and they all follow the rules.

As readers, it is easy for us to say that the trade-off is not worth it, that the citizens of Omelas should rebel against the rules and save the child, but the moral question Le Guin presents is complicated. How do we weigh the needs of the many against the needs of the one? The entire population of the city of Omelas gets to live happy, carefree, healthy lives without violence or war, and the only price to pay is the suffering of one person. The price is horrific, all the more so because the boy is merely ten years old, but sometimes a horrific price must be paid. How many of us in the prosperous first world are able to enjoy our luxuries because there are people around the world -- children sometimes -- suffering on our behalf. We happily shop for cheaply-made goods at the dollar store without thinking twice that there might be a child laborer slaving away twelve hours a day for less than a livable wage. Every level of society depends on the labor and work of the level below it. Le Guin taken this idea to the extreme, but the moral choice doesn't ever really go away. At some level, we are all willing to sacrifice the happiness of other in order to support our own.