Omelas

3 Pages 774 Words

The Dystopia of Omelas
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin. Omelas is a place where joy and leisure reign, where there are few rules, no kings or slaves, and the citizens are safe and happy. All citizens save one; a child imprisoned in a small room in a basement. The child has no contact with anyone except for the few who are brought to see or feed the child. The citizens’ joy rest entirely on the fact this child suffers. Le Guin uses irony to show a utopian society can not exist. She portrays this through a naïve narrator, a child in misery, and the fact Omelas no longer exists.
The narrator thinks Omelas is a great society. She describes it as joyous. The narrator states no “drooz” is necessary; the people celebrate a victory of life. She brags how happy the people of Omelas are, how the city is filled with “grave master workmen, quiet, merry women […] chatting as they walked […] people […] dancing […and children’s] high calls rising like the swallows’ crossing flights over the music and singing” (268). The narrator believes Omelas is a city where everyone wants to live. She is inclined to “think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming in to Omelas” (269) to join the joyous occasions.
The innocent narrator knows this is all possible due to the child’s suffering. She explains the child must be there for the towns’ 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” (271). She sees nothing wrong with making a child suffer for the greater good of the community. She attempts to justify his misery for the sake of the perfect society. She does not understand a utopian society strives for t...