LITERARY CRITICISM: THE ONES WHO WALKED AWAY FROM OMELAS

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Short Story

Realizing Utopia: The Cost of Happiness is one with Injustice, a literary criticism for the short story, The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin

Angel Ashley C. Rodriguez

What is the price of happiness?

Summary

What seemed like a story about a grandiose and joyous society turned out to be a question on morality and the condoning of one’s misery for the pleasure of many. This story serves as an idealized mirror image of our own world's reality of ethical tradeoffs and challenges us to reconsider some of our most fundamental notions of right and wrong.

How is one to tell about joy?

FORMALISM

FORMALISM

The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin

INTERPRETATION

EVENTS

ELEMENTS

SETTINGS

event 1

CHARACTERS

event 2

PLOT

event 3

theme

SETTINGS

Event

Interpretation

The narrator implores the readers to create the most perfect city imaginable in their minds. Citizens of Omelas are not simpletons. They are no less complex than us. There is room for hedonism in the city.

There are musical festivals, the conveniences of modern technology, and even drugs with no ill side effects. A celebration of victory but has no soldiers—“the victory they celebrate is that of life.” Most importantly there is no guilt in Omelas.

CHARACTERS

Event

Interpretation

Whereas in the beginning of the story, the narrator has focused on depicting the great happiness of Omelas as a whole, they now turn their focus to the other half of the equation: a suffering individual.

In a basement beneath one of the city’s public buildings lives a child. It is emaciated, very skinny. The child is naked and it defecates on the floor. It is covered in festering sores from sitting “in its own excrement continually.”.

PLOT

Event

Interpretation

While Omelas begins as a fictitious city, by the end of the story, the reader is forced to consider how Omelas compare to their own world.

There is an inescapable contract between the grandeur of the city and the agony of the child, the two are bound together and all would be ruined if the child were to escape its torment.

“In the world we live in, the majority can impose the most deplorable oppressions on the minority.”

MORAL-PHILOSOPHICAL

moral-philosophical

The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin

philosophy

EVENTS

moral

moral #1

philosophy #1

event 1

philosophy #2

event 2

moral #2

philosophy #3

moral #3

event 3

theme

EVENT

The existence of the child is not a secret. While some understand why this happens, some do not, but everyone understands that the perfection of Omelas depends on the child’s abject misery.

MORAL

PHILOSOPHY

An action is right insofar as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct.

Choosing an action that would benefit the majority is the best course of action.

EVENT

Most people eventually come to justify their inaction despite the initial trauma of discovering about the child. Although it takes some people weeks, while others years, almost everyone eventually accepts their predicament.

MORAL

PHILOSOPHY

People convince themselves that what they did was the best thing they could have done.

Learning to accept the harsh reality is part of life.

EVENT

Despite the fact that most Omelas inhabitants have come to accept the child's miserable situation, some still do not. Some Omelas citizens choose to reject the conditions of living there, but they can only do so by walking away from the city.

MORAL

PHILOSOPHY

In the face of inequality in exchange for the greater good, some individuals will strike out on their own to live by their morals, on their own terms.

A world with absolute equality might seem impossible but we must refuse to turn blind eye to injustice.

“It is never acceptable to treat anyone merely as a means to the ends of others.”

TROLLEY PROBLEM

SOCIAL MARXIST

social marxist

The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin

cultural

political

economical

Oppressor

Oppressed

Oppressor

Oppressed

Oppressor

Oppressed

event 1

event 2

event 3

theme

Oppressor

ECONOMICAL

Every citizen understands that everything good in their lives exists because of this child’s suffering.

Oppressed

Oppressor

POLITICAL

The moment the child is rescued, everybody else will begin to suffer as hopelessly as the child does now. That’s how things are in the story

Oppressed

Oppressor

CULTURAL

The idea of propitiation (gaining the favor) of Gods through human sacrifice is not new. In Omelas, subjecting the child into an endless torment is the exchange of all the glory and splendor the city has.

Oppressed

“Suffering is the price of happiness, and one cannot exist without the other. Not only that suffering enables joy, suffering and joy are always intermingled and achieving happiness necessitates an intimate understanding of grief.”

READER-RESPONSE

reader-response

The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin

reader-response

EVENTS

event 1

event 2

event 3

theme

Event

Interpretation

The true coming of age ritual of Omelas is learning how to justify one’s immoral actions, given the amoral nature of reality.

Where the cries and noise from the Festival of Summer indicated joy and a sense of community, the child’s cries and noises indicate abject misery and loneliness. “tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it.”

Event

Interpretation

The overall happiness of the city might not be just because of the arbitrary contract in the world's setting but rather it also has something to do with the way the citizens think.

“Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness.” As much as the child is a slave to its misery, the people of Omelas are enslaved to the child’s situation. None are truly free.

Event

Interpretation

We have no idea where the ones who leave go because it is impossible to imagine—the place may not even exist. Those who leave Omelas, however, do so with a sense of purpose, as if they "know where they are going."

I have come to the realization that though the citizens cannot alter a system that requires the child to suffer for the happiness of the city, the citizens can choose to disengage from Omelas society entirely by leaving Omelas.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

-Edmund Burke

“Learning to stand up for one’s own morality is the ultimate act of individualism.”

Overall Theme

• Happiness and Suffering
• Individual vs. Society
• Allegory and Imagination
• Coming of Age

Final Project

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