Omelas Guilt

The world is an interesting place, but more interesting is the people in it. The nature of human beings to be self-absorbed has been seen throughout the life of the earth. For generations, people have gained wealth or a better way of life off the misery of others with no expression of guilt for the terrible things they were doing. There are many examples of this behavior also known as human enslavement, from ancient times where people of conquered countries became enslaved to their conquerors to the early America lifestyle with black slaves who worked on white men’s fields. This behavior is also shown through literature. In the short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” by Ursula Le Guin, the majority of people of Omelas are fine with making someone
Except for the ones who walk away from Omelas, there is no guilt from the citizens in the city of Omelas; guilt is not allowed. They live shameless lives even though they know about the child in the basement and the cruel treatment it is receiving on their accounts. They realize to release the child would mean that they gave into guilt and since guilt is not allowed it would end their wonderful lives in Omelas. As a result, they would rather keep the child in the basement without feeling guilty for it: “…but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed” (Le Guin 256). The people of Omelas’ ability to have a lack of guilt towards the imprisonment of the child because they do not want to give up their lives in Omelas suggests that they are okay with letting someone else suffer for their