The short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin begins with a description of the joyous people of the city celebrating the Festival of Summer. The children are happy, and the adults are mature, intelligent, and passionate. The city has no royalty, clergy, or army, but it functions well, and the people are content without these things.
However, there is one sinister facet of the city that belies all of this joyous celebration. One child is locked away alone in a dirty room, lonely and neglected, and everyone is aware that the torture of this child is the key to the city's prosperity.
They all know it has to be there. Some of 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 upon this child's abominable misery.
The title of the story refers to certain people who do not accept this situation. Instead, they leave the city, and no one knows where they go. As for the rest, they accept this arrangement. The idea is that if evil does exist and cannot be eliminated, it is better that it is confined to one person than that everyone should suffer. It is important, though, that everyone should be aware of it, because this tortured person is being punished for the sins and imperfections of everyone else.
This is the concept of the scapegoat, which appears in the Old Testament of the Bible and reappears in the symbolism of Christ on the cross dying for the sins of the world. In ancient Israel, the sins of the tribes would be spiritually placed upon two goats. One would be sacrificed, and the other would be turned loose in the wilderness to die. These goats would bear the sins of the people so that the people would not have to suffer for them. Other ancient cultures also had similar customs and rituals, sometimes involving real people instead of animals. It was necessary for everyone's spiritual well-being that they were aware of the suffering being carried out in their stead.
The story states that everyone must be aware of the existence of the child living in misery so that they understand—or at least are fully aware—that all their happiness and material well-being is based on this one child's suffering.
The society depicted exemplifies the idea of utilitarianism, a philosophy that values "the greatest good for the greatest number." Society, according to this theory, should be organized on a "calculus" of pleasure and pain so that pleasure is maximized and pain minimized.
Most of the people of Omelas accept this philosophy as a reasonable trade-off. But it amounts to a superstition. As in Jackson's "The Lottery," we are never given a good explanation as to why the "terms" of prosperity require a human sacrifice.
Le Guin, who disliked utilitarianism, a philosophy she also critiques in her novel The Lathe of Heaven, wants readers to question building most people's happiness on the misery of others. It's the people who walk away from the beautiful city because they can't accept the terms that Le Guin wants us to think about. Is there not a better way to organize a culture?
Everyone in the city knows of the child who is locked away, living in filth and subsisting on corn meal and grease; some people come to see the child and others never do, but they are all aware of its existence. The narrator says,
They all know that it has to be there. Some of 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.
Therefore, it appears that none of the good and wonderful and beautiful and happy aspects of life would be possible without some knowledge of the harsh and terrible and ugly and miserable aspects of life. The light cannot exist without the dark, and so everyone in Omelas must be aware of the child's misery so that they can truly understand and appreciate their own happiness. The narrator, in this vein, continues, saying,
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.
The people can convince themselves that the misery of this one child, when weighed against the absolute gorgeous happiness of thousands of others, is minor. Misery must exist somewhere, and without this child's misery, it seems, everyone would have to accept their share of it. The child's misery, and the townspeople's knowledge of it, are what make possible their perfect happiness because we cannot know one without the other.
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