Introduction
The One who walks away from Omelas is taken from Ursula Le Guin’s short story compilation, the wind’s Twelve Quarters, in this story, Le Guin presents a story of an imaginary city where delight and happiness thrive, where people are cultured and smart. Everything about this Utopian city seems pleasing and perfect, but there is a dark side of this city; for the city of Omelas to maintain its affluence, a child is kept in misery, filth, and darkness.
Description of the story
The story takes place in summer during a city festival, where Le Guin, take the leader on an imagination spree, where she gives details of this Perfect city. Her description of the city fills the leader with images of perfection, an attractive architecture, coupled with a clear blue sky, blue ponds and lakes, warm air with a bird soaring over the horizon, cheerful music, brilliant colors, and happy people who are having fun of their life.
She continues to describe the city as a place where there are no technology, alcohol, religion, and drugs, where people have sex without inhibition. By so doing, Le Guin is inviting the reader to participate in the story, through the imagination of this perfect place. To bring the reader into speed with the habitants of the city, she describes them as people who are mature, passionate, and intelligent and “…are not as simple folk’
On leadership and Governance, Le Guin thinks that the city of Omelas does not need a leader in form of a king, Monarch, or any form of government, this, as she tells the reader, is to avoid rebellion within the city, which would, of course, end the city and the story she has created to her readers.
The happiness and the contentment of the city of Omelas stem from a young, tormented boy locked up in a dark, filthy, broom closet. The young boy has to suffer for the citizen of Omelas. “…the tenderness of their friendships, the beauty of their city, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery”
Le Guin thinks that the citizen of Omelas have convinced themselves that it is perfectly in order and acceptable for one person to suffer to bring happiness to the masses, and nobody is willing to free the boy or question this issue. She continues “……to exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away that happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one: that would be guilt within the walls indeed”
The insinuation that the happiness and success of all citizens of Omelas stem from the suffering of the young boy, conflicts with the fact that there are those who “…are always shocked and sickened at the sight”, those who depend on the consumption of drooz to enjoy life in Omelas, and those whose sense of morality forces them to walk away in search of happiness. These two groups of people are nonconformists of the city belief. They are convinced there is another way to happiness.
Those who decide to walk away from Omelas decide not to participate in its system by leaving. They are just too afraid to fight the system and take the situation head-on. Their actions leave the reader contemplating on what he would do if he was a citizen of Omelas, would he run away, would confronting the system by question the wish of majority work. These are fundamental questions that Le Guin put to the reader’s mind.
Those running away are not sure of where they are going as Le Guin put it at the end of the story “The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.” This twist leaves the reader asking himself, why would they then decide to run away to a place they are not sure of?
Conclusion
Le Guin has succeeded in presenting his thoughts to the reader through her story by using various techniques, Imagery techniques have helped in describing the City of Omelas. Her story starts as a fairy tale but she quickly transforms it into fiction. Le Guin succeeds in putting the readers right in the middle of her story, but again fails in bringing them out, as the reader is left asking him/herself so many questions.