Omelas

In Ursula Le Guin’s fantasy science fiction story, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, LeGuin uses vague and vivid imagery to add to the mystifying and perplexing city of Omelas. The author reveals that words are insufficient to describe how perfect the city of Omelas is, and ask the reader to create their own mental image of the people and town. In other words, Omelas is a utopia which is impossible to conceive in modern society due to conflict of interest making it impractical to satisfy everyone’s needs. The author proposes key elements or symbols that allow for Omelas to exist as a paradise.
First, what exactly is a utopia and how does it relate to happiness? The dictionary states, “an imagined place or state of things in which everything
The child is used as a sacrifice for the people of Omelas, to ensure that the population lives with prosperity and peace. The child serves multiple functions in the society, and one of them is the scapegoat. To live in Omelas it becomes a rite of passage to know the existence of the child and the narrator explains what the people think of it, “Some of the 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 misery” (LeGuin 534). The quote describes the purpose of the child’s imprisonment, that if he wasn’t in misery, the whole town will be in desolation. In the story, it is shown that the child remembers a time before he was imprisoned, often calling out to his mother. It is known that he used to call out to be able to be freed, showing that he did not sign up to take the role of a martyr. Thus, they begin to live in acceptance of this fact, if they ever falter the narrator states, “To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single improvement… that would be to let the guilt within the walls indeed” (LeGuin 530). The Omelas people are able to live with themselves by denying the guilt they feel,
This situation speaks in volumes, and can be seen throughout life. For example, all people of a society know there are homeless people who are starving, or suffering among them, yet people tend to make two decisions. They either help them or ignore it and accept that homelessness is a fact. Few people would risk their own safety or happiness to help another faceless person, they do not know. The utopian’s people happiness definition can be applied here where, to be happy people deny their own guilt of not helping others, or that their must be homeless to have people be more financially well off like job