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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Summary

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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin that is about a utopian city Omelas during its Festival of Summer. The city is known for its happiness and beauty. The Festival of Summer is where the whole town of Omelas joins together to celebrate. They have processions throughout the city celebrating along with a festival race. Bells clamor and people are singing and dancing to the music. The Omelas people are not simple. “They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not Wretched” (LeGuin 2). But there is one thing that allows them to be happy and to stay happy, that is a child that lives in a broom closet under the city. The story starts out with a happy society that is celebrating a festival of summer. Music is playing, and people are dancing as they processed down the street towards the Green Fields where naked kids are getting their bare horses ready for a race throughout the countryside. After the author describes how happy the city is she asks a question “How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas” (LeGuin 1). She …show more content…

It talks about the two different views of happiness. The first view of happiness is that happiness is not happiness if it is based on the suffering of another person. In the title The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, it suggests that the ones who walk away are the people that don’t believe happiness of the city should be based on the suffrage of one person. That’s why in the last paragraph it says “These people go out into the street and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates” (LeGuin 7). The second view of happiness is that the happiness of an entire city is worth the suffering of one child. The people who go and see the child but don’t walk away from Omelas are the people that believe the happiness of a community is worth the misery of one

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