“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is a story by Ursula K. Le Guin, which describes a city in Utopia known as Omelas. From the narrator’s description, the city is filled with so much life and happiness. The happiness in Omelas is different from that which people are used to. They do not have the fancy things and luxuries that today’s society term happiness. Happiness and good life in Omelas are their way of life, the celebrations, the festivals, and how people relate with each other where they have no kings or clergy. Le Guin portrays a fictitious town’s parade and summer festival. The plot is full of contrasts and parallels about the concept of happiness between the fictional city of Omelas and our society. It offers explanations for why both communities lack genuine joy. In The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, there is no true happiness in the world without suffering or a price to pay.
The happiness of the Omelas people is so evident that it makes it difficult for one to know that there is a dark secret behind it which Le Guin unveils later on in the story. She claims that although people are simple individuals, they are satisfied. They have no rulers, and they don’t enslave people. They are not ancient people. Le Guin, however, mentions that she needs to fully comprehend the laws of the people of Omela; she suspects that they are noymany. Until there is a plot twist where the narrator lets us into the darker side of the story, where we get to find the trustworthy source of their happiness and prosperity. After providing a more in-depth description of the city of Omelas, its residents, and the summer festival, the narrator mentions one final detail, which brings out the dark details of the Omelas community. There is a child of about six years of age imprisoned in the dark basement of the beautiful public building of the city. The child is denied food and access to sunlight and is forced to sit on their own waste. This is the dark secret that the people of Omelas know about but do not talk about it. This child’s suffering brings joy and happiness to the people of Omelas.
The people of Omelas are utilitarians. They view an ethical act as that which will be of excellent good to the majority. In this case, the child’s suffering is ethical and a sacrifice for the happiness, wellness, and prosperity of the people of Omelas. That is why Le Guin mentions that these people do not have any guilt in them. Being utilitarians, the people of Omelas believe that it is ethical for the child to suffer for the happiness of thousands. Le Guin says, “If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; 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 happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed ( Le Guin,4).”
In the society that we live in, everyone is focused on their happiness, even if it is at the expense of other people’s happiness. This is the same case in Omelas, where the child in the basement is only kept there for the town’s sake, allowing people living on the streets above to enjoy the event. This is comparable to modern society in that individuals hurry through life without giving any thought to the poor or homeless, only occasionally sneaking a glimpse to convince themselves that they do have it better. Our culture finds happiness in knowing that we have it better than others, which makes us happy. A population should not ignore the pain of one or more individuals to maintain its happiness. Everyone in the community visits the youngster at least once; according to the author, not a single person offers the helpless, withering child even a scrap of assistance. The residents of Omelas are aware that if they provide the child any help, all of their joy and happiness will be taken away from them (Le Guin,5). To passively observe the suffering youngster is a daily decision that the citizens must make for their happiness to be guaranteed.
The narration brings a moral conflict among the readers on whether it is suitable for one individual to suffer for the whole society to be happy. What makes it challenging to decide if it is right or wrong is that the person whose misery in society has been dumped on is a child. Is it morally right to make a child who may not understand happiness suffer? Le Guin, who narrates from a standby point where she seems not fully informed about the community of Omelas, only dwells a little on the issue of morality. She leaves that question to the reader to include whether or not it is morally right to let the child suffer for them to be happy.
Le Guin intended to use the suffering child as a tool that the people of Omelas keep in their closet. As we all know, there is always that dirty little secret that even the happiest people have that they try so hard to hide. The suffering child was in the dark basement room, which only the Omelas people knew about and could always visit. The suffering child references the phrase “having skeletons in the closet.” It stands for “the correct type of delight,” the exact thing that prevents everyone from feeling pure joy (Le Guin 4).
There is always an imbalance in society; for others to be happy, there are those who must suffer. Le Guin, at the beginning of the story, had described the Omelas society as one that experiences happiness differently from the society we live in. in how they live in peace with no rulers, no religious leaders, just pleasure and freedom to the extent where the children celebrate the summer festivals while naked. However, the secret they hide from the outside world reveals that genuine happiness is hard to find, like in everyday society. The fact that everyone in Omelas knows about the child and some want to help shows that they are accustomed to living with the guilt of making the child suffer for them to be happy, which they can not do anything about. No one wants to help the child or take their place in the basement because, as human beings, we concentrate primarily on our happiness and not that of everyone. That is why there will be someone somewhere suffering for others’ happiness.
The pleasure and success of the city should not be based on the suffering of one child for no rhyme or reason. The narrator needs to explain it. Because Le Guin readily admits her ignorance of Omelas and its customs, the narrator is what we would refer to as an “uncertain narrator” as opposed to an unreliable narrator. For instance, the narrator acknowledges that she has no idea where those individuals—the “ones who walk away from Omelas”—are heading ( Le Guin,5). She is not sure of where the individuals who cannot live with the guilt of letting an innocent child suffer go when they leave Omelas. Does the responsibility continue tormenting them, or do they finally find pure happiness? This is a question that Le Guin did not answer in her narration.
Some people still believe that others should not suffer for the sake of the majority’s happiness. Just like in Omelas, some decide to walk away from Omelas after seeing the child’s suffering and are unable to help. Le Guin says, “They leave Omelas, walk ahead into the darkness, and do not come back. The place they go towards is even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness, (Le Guin,5).” These people believed there was a happy world where the helpless did not have to pay the price for the majority to be happy. However, the narrator describes that most of the citizens of Omelas have accepted the fact that a child has to suffer for them to be happy. Those who choose to stay have to accept that there must be suffering for happiness to be there. This proves just like in our society, for the majority to be happy, there is a minority who must suffer.
In conclusion, Le Guin has been able to demonstrate the reality that is there about happiness in society. In the world that we live in, there is no genuine happiness without suffering. Even the happiest people we see in the streets or on social media have undergone some suffering or are hiding some dark secrets behind those happy faces. Just like the people of Omelas, we must accept the reality of life that suffering is part of it and grab any chance we get to be happy. If we fight all the wrongs and injustices in the world to be satisfied, we might not know what happiness is, just like the one who walked away from Omelas.
Work Cited
Le Guin, Ursula. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” The Unreal and the Real, Volume 2: Outer Space, Inner Lands. Small Beer Press, 2012, pp. 1-5.
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