I was a guest on a small podcast recently where we discussed Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.’ It is a chilling story and perhaps one of Le Guin’s best works. It is certainly the most famous of her short stories.1 In it, we are introduced to the utopian city of Omelas. Le Guin builds the world in front of the reader, introducing new details and complications — the drugs and alcohol, the festivals, the level of technology are all seemingly negotiated with the reader. We discover that it is a world of few laws, of moderate technology kept in its proper place, and of festivals.
The twist, of course, is that Omelas is a world propped up by immense suffering, and this suffering is highly concentrated. A single child is kept in a basement, covered in filth and starved of food and affection. Through some unholy bargain, the child’s suffering ensures that the way of life in Omelas. Not even a kind word can be said the child. It is the scapegoat. It suffers in order to provide all of this happiness and bliss.
The people of Omelas know this. Most come to terms with it — they rationalize the suffering, telling themselves that the child won’t ever be able to enjoy the world if it is set free, and so the child’s rescue would do nothing but harm. Most eventually learn to live with it, and they go on enjoying their lives in paradise.
But some cannot come to terms with it. They walk away. They cannot accept the terms of the arrangement, and so they leave.
But where do they go? Le Guin writes this at the end of the story:
The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
In our conversation on the podcast, we discussed this at length — should one walk away from Omelas?
In the story, it is presented as if there are only two options: remain or walk away. This choice has been criticized, of course. Notably, the writer N.K. Jemisin, no fan of subtlety, wrote ‘The Ones Who Stay and Fight’ in response to Le Guin. Jemisin instead wants us to imagine a world in which we stay in Eden and fight like hell to drive out evil. And admittedly, a reader should wonder why those who walk away from Omelas simply walk away in the dead of night, never explaining why or where they are going.
When asked on the podcast, my answer was that we ought to walk away. But, I said, we have to understand what we’re going to do next. We have to at least have a commitment to building something beautiful, wherever we end up.
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