“The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin In the short story, “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas”, by Ursula Le Guin, the author tells the story of the beautiful and happy city of Omelas. Everything and everyone in Omelas seems to prosper, making Omelas seem like a perfect city and Utopian society. However hidden deep down in the darkness somewhere beneath the city of Omelas is the city’s secret, a young child is kept there, starving, tortured, forbidden of any happiness, and never to see the light of day.
In order for this so called “perfect city” to exist, this child must live in endless misery and woe. In Le Guin’s writing of this story, she explores various binary oppositions, toleration, and the topic and use of a scapegoat, in order to create a metaphor of social injustice, discrimination, and human rights violations, which occur all around us today.
The people of Omelas justify the misery and torture of the one child, “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 harvests and the kindly weather of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (Le Guin, 5).
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They believe that it is a necessary evil that must exist in order for them to live their luxurious and beautiful lives. Their toleration turns from ignorance to unlawful neglect.
Jovan Babic critics this point of view in his journal on ethics and his critique of the topic of toleration, “Tolerance involves absorbing the attitude that others may have and act upon a definition of “the Good” which is different from our own. ” (227).
According to Jovan Babic’s definition of tolerance, the people of Omelas do not possess true toleration with regards to the misery of the young child, but what do they possess? Jovan Babic answers this question as well, “it is quite easy to substitute for genuine toleration its pretend version.
This so-called toleration may in fact generate very intolerant attitudes and behaviors. ” (227).
The people of Omelas possess this fake sense of toleration, they believe that by tolerating the suppression of one young child, that they are benefitting the entire city as a whole. They believe that “happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive” (Le Guin, 2).
That being said the people believe that the misery of the child is a necessary evil, a price that they are willing to pay in order to keep their false sense of happiness and well being.
Do we not do this today? Are there not times when we, the human race, look away when someone faces discrimination because it would inconvenience us? If we do not stand up for these so called “child’s beneath Omelas”, then we are no different than the people of Omelas who live in luxury and prosperity whilst an innocent child is tortured deep beneath their perfect city. Throughout the short story, “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas”, there are various binary oppositions that Le Guin purposely buried into her writings and descriptions of the so-called perfect city of Omelas.
The story is filled with them and they all point back to the greater binary opposition of good vs. evil as a whole. David L. Porter notes that the “unity and equilibrium of good and evil in human nature reflects on the individual scale the larger universal balance and interdependence of opposites in the broader natural world” (243) Without good there can exist no evil, and without evil there can exist no good, ironically the two go hand in hand. In the story of Omelas the young child involuntarily takes upon himself all the sadness, despair, failure, etc.
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and the people of Omelas are then blessed with a lifetime of prosperity void of the evils of life. Lee Cullen Khanna points out these binary oppositions in her essay on Ursula Le Guin’s writing, “Beyond Omelas, Utopia, and Gender”. Some examples that Khanna noted included “Utopian citizens parade, in unity and joy, into their beautiful city; dissenting citizens walk alone and sorrowfully away from it” (48), “the young flute player is… juxtaposed with the suffering child of the same age” (48), and “Utopian accomplishment is suggested in the city’s glorious public buildings, even as the dark basement houses the secret sufferer” (48).
The people of Omelas need to realize that with every good comes an evil, one cannot live his life without feeling of the malice’s of the world. Sometimes it is best to just embrace the bad things of the world and let them happen, not to cover them up and direct them elsewhere, as the people of Omelas did. By directing the misery and woes of the people of Omelas to the child, they turned the child into a scapegoat. With all the people that live in endless happiness and luxury in the city of Omelas, someone has to take upon himself the pain and misery. The pain and misery cannot just vanish.
The young boy plays this role. He is forced to take upon himself all the sadness and misery that goes on in the city of Omelas and as such he lives a torturous life in the darkness. The young boy involuntarily plays the role of a scapegoat in this story. Yes, some good comes from it, but at what cost? How can the endless misery and torture of a young innocent boy be worth it? The people of Omelas ought to take it upon themselves to save the young child. A “perfect city” that is fundamentally built upon the torture and injustice of a young and innocent child, can in no way be considered a “perfect city”.
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The Ones Who Stay At Omelas Utopia is any state, condition, or place of ideal perfection. In Ursula Le Guin's short story 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' the city of Omelas is described as a utopia. 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' presents a challenge of conscience for anyone who chooses to live in Omelas. Omelas is described by the narrator as the story begins. The city appears to be ...
Throughout world history a scapegoat has been used as a source to which people have channeled the negativity of the world, whether Jew, Muslim, Christian, African American, Asian, etc. etc. all have at some point been a victim of being a scapegoat. It is human nature to search for a place to put the blame, often time it ends up being a minority. Subconsciously it seems, humans have become so numb to the injustice around them that when an injustice does occur, it is often overlooked and ignored.
Even today in America people face social injustice based on the basis of race, gender, religion, and most notably today, sexuality. In 29 US states there are no laws that prevent the discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people (LGBT), in the workplace. This means that these people can be fired, denied promotion, and experience harassment on the job solely based on their sexuality (Employment, 1).
Numerous times throughout history, LGBT people have been a scapegoat.
Even today they’re blamed for the deterioration of the institution of marriage; however the divorce rate of heterosexual couples, which is nearly 50% seems to deteriorate the institution of marriage by far more than the expansion of marriage to homosexual couples, who have a divorce rate about half that of heterosexual couples (Hertz, 1).
In order to prevent the American society from becoming like unto that of Omelas, where social injustice is a norm, the American people must first become aware of the social injustices’ and discrimination that occur all around.
Then they must recognize and acknowledge that something must be done, and then do something about it. One flaw of those that walked away from Omelas was simply that they walked away. If someone is facing being discriminated against, one cannot just walk away from it, one should stand up and do something about it. Le Guin wanted people to realize this when she wrote “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas”. She wanted people to become of aware of the social injustices that occur even today, and she wanted people to do something about it.
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