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Walking away from Omelas?



Image 1: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" book cover.

This week, my class and I read Ursula Le Guin’s short sci-fi story called “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. The story features a breath-taking seaside city of Omelas, the city is celebrating a summer festival; everywhere there is happiness. “Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time,” Le Guin writes.

Sadly, there is one catch; Omelas happiness depends on one child’s, suffering. He/she is locked away in a basement room, it is not loved and barely fed. Surprisingly the happy people of Omelas are aware of the torment of the child, the people of Omelas are selfish in the sense that they are willing to sacrifice this child’s life in order for their own happiness. Some people however decide to leave Omelas after witnessing the horrors of the child.

My online avatar mirrors my RL self. I wouldn’t consider myself to be any different online to how I am in person. I have strong morals and values and upon reading “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” I was instantly disgusted. How could anyone live in such place whose happiness depended on the torment of a young innocent child?

I couldn’t wrap my head around the deal the people of this city had agreed upon. The city would not trade their privileges to relieve the child’s torture. Living lavish lifestyles because of the child’s suffering is upsetting. We compare it to our own lives and must admit that we could do more for the poor, but we live in such a complex world that it is hard to do so. If I had the choice I would choose to walk away from this utopian society. Le Guin highlighted the fact that in our own world we choose to ignore the suffering of the poor and continue living our own happy lives.

I believe my avatar would walk away from this city as I wouldn't be able to live such a happy life at the hands of a child's suffering. 

To end this short sci-fi story, we learn that the child is not rescued and the people of Omelas are not forced to face their wrongdoings. We do learn that sometimes; some people do walk away once they have seen the child. This sci-fi story creates a world that mirrors our own in a sense, we are then forced to confront how similar our world is to Omelas. There are many paths we can walk, which path we choose is our choice.

"They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back," she writes. "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas”. – Ursula Le Guin.

References:
Cooper, Gael. 2019. "Ursula Le Guin Taught Us How To Walk Away From Omelas". CNET. https://www.cnet.com/news/ursula-leguin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas/.

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