The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Recently I have become very interested in reading literary short stories and I came across a very interesting one. The story is The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin and and is a very interesting story about a Utopian society, their joys and flaws, and how we can relate to it in our own lives. In the process of telling the story of this society, she brings up some very interesting issues and makes some really good points. *Warning: if you plan to read the story before reading the rest, do not continue until you have read it!*

Essentially, the narrator describes a society that lives in perfect harmony and is always happy. The have the freedom to think, philosophize, create, and live in happiness. The countryside and all their people are beautiful, all their science is poiniant, their literature profound, and their music profound. The only condition they need to fill in order to maintain their perfect society is that a single has to live a wretched, lonely life, locked away in a cellar in one of the buildings. All of the citizens of Omelas know about the child and accept it as a necessary evil, but some are disgusted by it and decide to leave and live a life without this guilt. They are the ones who walk away from Omelas.

In my mind, Le Guin presents two very interesting points about these people and about us. First, she shows that if we lived in Omelas, we probably would not leave. If we had grown up in this society, we would probably accept it as part of life and not question what was wrong about living a life without guilt. We would simply file it away and move on with our lives and try to direct our anxiety elsewhere. In the same way, we often do this in our own society and lives, taking too much for granted and shufffling away the things that bother us so that we can continue to live complacent lives.

The second point that Le Guin makes, and one that I truly believe in, is that those that leave Omelast don't have the correct response either. By leaving Omelas, they are merely removing themselves from guilt and doing nothing to help the child. What good are they doing if they simply isolate themselves and don't respond to what they know is right? For us, it would be very easy to simply denounce our society and isolate ourselves from it and not seek to make things right.

So, what are we to do with the problems in our society? I believe that we are called to not only open our eyes to the problems around us that we may take for granted, but we should also seek out what God has planned to right these things, rather than either trying to be ignorant of them or run away and save only ourselves from that guilt. How can we see things around us, but not be tempted to merely walk away from Omelas?