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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

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Do you have an answer? Great. Now change the word you to the people of Omelas from Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and Klondike Bar to the happiness, beauty, and success of Omelas and its inhabitants. The answer to the question now is to keep a single child trapped in “abominable misery”, never freeing it or even speaking a kind word to it. Despite using a child as a sacrifice so the majority of the city can live an untroubled life the narrator, who serves as the main character, never says a negative word about the people of Omelas. From the lack of criticism of those who stay, to the absence of guilt felt by Omelians, and finally to the anonymity of the story leads to the claim that Le Guin feels as if those who stay …show more content…

On the surface, it seems as if the ones who walk away are being courageous when in truth they are cowards. Although as Sarah Wyman states nearly all people would focus on the one “incarcerated lost soul” and claim freeing the kid is the more ethical choice than the belief that the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the one. No matter which option, a person chooses, by making a choice they are at least acknowledging the child and it’s suffering.The ones who leave remove themselves from the situation so they do not need to make the decision of whether to help the kid and damn the rest of society or preserve the “prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas” and keep the status quo regarding the child. By letting the child remain in it’s horrible situation and then not even acknowledging that it is in that situation for them, the one who walk away are truly cruel people of …show more content…

One example includes the Holocaust where the people being held in concentration camps and killed are the child trapped in a basement, the leaders of the Allies after WWI are the ones who leave Omelas, and the rest of the world are the ones who remain in Omelas. The Jewish people were being treated increasingly poorly, but the world had just finished a world war and no one wanted to dive back into another conflict so by ignoring the suffering a few the majority could live, at least comparatively, joyous lives. Just like the ones who walked away, the leaders of the Allies avoided taking action while pretending to be concerned at the treatment of others. The people left over are the citizens of Omelas on the grounds that despite knowing of the horrors going on, the knowledge of said horrors is pushed aside so they could keep their pleasant lives. The ones who could have done something for those who were suffering but didn’t, the presidents, prime ministers, and kings were not the superior one, they were the cowards who left. One other instance, as mentioned by Wyman, is when “contemporary Western capitalist society” serves as the ones who walk away and less developed countries symbolize the child. The third world countries undergo appalling conditions in order for the more developed

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