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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Critical Lens Essay

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Who controls life? Who gets to decide the good and the evil? Who is this who? These questions are brought to attention in Le Guin’s story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” written in 1973. In the beginning Omelas seemed like the utopia that everyone dreams of. Omelas had a guarantee of happiness; it struck a bargain, although how and with whom is unclear. The bargain is this: the happiness in the city will remain constant as long as a child, who is trapped underneath the city, suffers miserably. Some go to see the child, others are content knowing that the child is there, and some walk away from the city thinking there is nothing they can do for the child. The book of Genesis in the Bible is similar to the story told by Le Guin. The characters happiness and contentment are based solely on the following of rules set by a …show more content…

In the book of God, The Bible, there is a set of rules that people in today’s society take quite literally. Humans follow this set of rules in fear of the consequences if they rebel, like in the book of Genesis. She shows that humans move as a herd, doing the things that benefit the majority under the control of the rules that were made by a man or woman no different than anyone else. Le Guin brings light to the oversight of this issue, people do not realize the utilitarian society that has fallen into place. People put up blockers to ignore the bad in the world so they can keep their Eden. The people who walk away from this lie, like in Omelas, are leaving a hellish world that they believe is Eden but it is truly not. Le Guin wants people to break free from the majority and become individuals who set their own paths in life. Le Guin wrote “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” to prove that society is formed in a way where a hell for one, is not paradise for all, it’s only a paradise for

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