" The people are prevented from doing anything to try and make the child's life better, and they all follow the rules.
As readers, it is easy for us to say that the trade-off is not worth it, that the citizens of Omelas should rebel against the rules and save the child, but the moral question Le Guin presents is complicated. How do we weigh the needs of the many against the needs of the one? The entire population of the city of Omelas gets to live happy, carefree, healthy lives without violence or war, and the only price to pay is the suffering of one person. The price is horrific, all the more so because the boy is merely ten years old, but sometimes a horrific price must be paid. How many of us in the prosperous first world are able to enjoy our luxuries because there are people around the world -- children sometimes -- suffering on our behalf. We happily shop for cheaply-made goods at the dollar store without thinking twice that there might be a child laborer slaving away twelve hours a day for less than a livable wage. Every level of society depends on the labor and work of the level below it. Le Guin taken this idea to the extreme, but the moral choice doesn't ever really go away. At some level, we are all willing to sacrifice the happiness of other in order to support our own.
The exception, of course, is those in the story who choose to walk away from Omelas. Some of them make the decision to leave right after they have seen the boy, immediately rejecting the exchange of their...
They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture," and the other good things about Omelas (6). The metaphor of the child is a metaphor for our own, less perfect, but still pleasant existence. In America, while we enjoy relative prosperity, millions still suffer in
Walk Away from Omelas tells the tale of a city that must torture one of its citizens so that the rest can live a happy and cultured life. The one child that must be kept in misery is a scapegoat and must receive all of the filth, poverty, darkness, and misery so that others may have a utopian life. This poses a moral dilemma that the citizens must come
In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” Usula Le Guin describes a utopic community that hides a dark secret. The story is like a thought experiment in ethics, calling into question the efficacy of ethical consequentialism or utilitarianism versus deontological ethics. Omelas is a thriving, joyful place but the happiness and health that abounds there “depend wholly on” the “abominable misery” of a single child (Le Guin 252). Le
The victim protests that it is not fair when it is her own fate that is at stake, not when another person might be selected. The character's in Jackson's town are named, and have more distinguishing characteristics than the vague protagonists of Omelas. But because they are so utterly unaware of the moral consequences of their actions, the reader does not feel much compassion towards them, unlike the residents of
We accept these injustices because in theory the poor and the suffering can better themselves through hard work, due to the nature of the capitalist system. We try to rectify these injustices to some degree through social support safety nets: yet for many individuals, there is too much to overcome, too many obstacles placed in their way even before they are born. On a macro level, the developing world often
Shirley Jackson's the Lottery with Ursula Le Guin's the Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Literature has always been a vehicle for change, fueled by the contributions of various writers/thinkers who provide just the right food for thought. One such contribution has been made by Shirley Jackson through the short story The Lottery. Comparable in effectiveness is the work of Ursula Le Guin by the name of The Ones Who
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