The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

"In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance." 

One way in which the narrator attempts to convey the happiness of Omelas is through the motif of music, which, because it is often wordless, can capture emotions that elude easy description.In this passage, she further emphasizes the relationship between music and joy by using words that evoke light ("shimmering") and describing the people dancing rather than walking, as if in an overflow of emotion.

"Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?" 

This is the first moment in Le Guin's story when the narrator admits to being at a loss. Up until this point, the description of Omelas reads as a fairly conventional third-person narrative. Now, however, we begin to realize that the narrator is not actually infallible. This is significant in and of itself, since it will be clear by the end of the story that the narrator does not feel herself able to authoritatively judge the moral decisions of either Omelas or her readers. It also speaks, however, to the difficulty of imagining happiness, given the cynicism and suffering in our own world—something the narrator elaborates on over the next several paragraphs.

"But there was no king. They did not use swords or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb." 

In this passage, the narrator clarifies that—despite the associations we may have with things like horses and festivals—Omelas is not a city from the distant past. This is important, because the narrator suggests that locating the happy city of Omelas in ancient times would mean romanticizing practices that now strike us as "barbaric" (e.g. slavery). It is also striking, however, that the narrator immediately moves from condemning monarchy and slavery as thepracticesof "barbarians" to a list of modern institutions that Omelas also forgoes (e.g. the stock exchange). In other words, the narrator implicitly draws a parallel between barbarism and the consumerism, nuclearization, etc. that characterize our own world. We are likely meant to find it disturbing that the people of Omelas, for all their reliance on the suffering of the abandoned child, are still in some sense morally superior to us.

"This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain." 

In describing Omelas, the narrator says she must contend with the idea that suffering is intrinsically more interesting or complex than happiness. As a result, she says, we tend to think of happiness in terms of clichés (e.g. "dulcet shepherds"). As this passage notes, however, it is arguably rather strange to consider happiness a cliché, because in our own world it is "evil" and "pain" that are truly predictable—so much so, in fact, that it is the addition of the suffering child that, according to the narrator, will finally make us see Omelas as realistic. This excerpt, then, paves the way for the final description of those who leave the city walking toward a literally unimaginable place: ultimately, the most original and unthinkable thing would be a wholly good world.

"Omelas sounds in my words like a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all." 

On the face of it, the narrator's invitation to her readers to imagine Omelas for themselves is an attempt to get around the difficulty of trying to convey near-perfect happiness; aware that her own ideas may strike us as cliché, the narrator asks us to fill in the details as we like. In retrospect, however, it is clear that this invitation also serves another purpose. The narrator wants us to believe in the reality of Omelas not simply because it forces us to consider our assumptions about happiness, but also because the moral choice underpinning the city is one we must make as well. By having us participate in creating Omelas, Le Guin underscores the fact that the city truly isn't "long ago and far away," but rather a series of decisions we make in our own day-to-day lives.

"But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate." 

One problem with imagining happiness, the narrator implies, is that we tend to think of it as boring. This is particularly true when talking about happiness on a societal scale, because we're used to thinking of things that are fun as potentially destabilizing: sex, for instance, can result in unwanted children. In Omelas, however, these negative consequences do not exist—the narrator explicitly tells us that any babies born after the orgy will be cared for—so she urges us to make Omelas’s pleasures as "mature" and sensual as we like.

"One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt."

The narrator's insistence that there is no guilt in Omelas is significant, because it eliminates one possible explanation for the behavior of those who leave: they are not trying to assuage an internal sense of discomfort. Their action, then, would appear to be a "purely" moral one, motivated by a sense of right and wrong but not influenced by an emotion like guilt. This hints that a truly just society is possible, if not perhaps imaginable. 

"Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing." 

Despite all her attempts to make Omelas real to her readers, the narrator knows on some level that her efforts are useless. Whether because our own society is imperfect, or because our ideas about happiness are inseparable from our ideas about pain, we cannot really "believe" in a city like Omelas until the narrator reveals that suffering does in fact exist there. It is also worth noting the word choice in this passage, particularly the notion of "accepting" Omelas. At first, it may simply look like another way of asking whether we believe in the truth of Omelas. However, it also foreshadows the "terms" that Omelas’s people have accepted in order to secure their happiness, and thus prompts us to consider whether wehave also struck that bargain.

"In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible." 

The description of the abandoned child and its surroundings clashes in almost every possible way with what we know of Omelas as a whole, and, especially, what we know of Omelas’s children. Unlike the boys and girls we have seen playing flutes, riding horses, and running along the city streets, this child is miserable, frightened, physically weak, and deprived of all recreation and human contact. In fact, it is so dehumanized that the narrator refers to it simply as "it,"a pronoun normally used for things, rather than for people. That being the case, it is even more striking that Le Guin mentions the child's fear of the mops. This small, idiosyncratic detail adds an element of psychological realism to a story that the narrator herself acknowledges may otherwise come across as a "fairy tale." In other words, it underscores the narrator's later point that what makes a story truly "credible" is suffering.

"They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas…they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, 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." 

Up until this point in the story, it is not clear why the people of Omelas are keeping the child in such deplorable conditions. Now, however, the narrator clarifies that everything that makes life in Omelas idyllic hinges on the child's misery. The passageis therefore central to the story's treatment of utilitarianism: the narrator juxtaposes a long list of Omelas’s blessings—good weather, health, learning, etc.—with a single child's "misery." Quantitatively, in other words, it is clear that the happiness caused by the child's imprisonment far outweighs the child’s sadness. The fact that we are nevertheless likely to find the "terms" disturbing hints that perhaps quantity is not the only consideration that matters in moral decisions.

"To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed." 

In addition to further underscoring the utilitarian logic behind the child's imprisonment, this passage also touches on the role that certainty plays in ethics. Part of what would make freeing the child "wrong," from the perspective of Omelas’s citizens, is that it might not have any benefits; it is impossible to know, ahead of time, whether the child would in fact ever be happy. By the end of the story, however, Le Guin will suggest that morality may mean exactly the opposite—that is, acting on an instinctive sense of right and wrong even if the consequences of the decision are "unimaginable" in a very literal sense.

"Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more."

Although the treatment of the abandoned child is likely to appall readers, the narrator is clear that thepeople of Omelas are not immoral. On the contrary, when they first learn about the child's existence, they are deeply distressed. The story suggests, however, that this sense of outrage is difficult to maintain over time, particularly when their own well-being hinges on the child's suffering. As a result, they attempt to explain away the child's suffering in various ways—here, for instance, by arguing that freedom would not ultimately benefit the child anyway. As with the other moral questions the story poses, Le Guin implicitly asks readers to consider whether they have compromised their sense of ethics in a similar way. 

"Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science." 

The narrator has insisted throughout the entire story that happiness in Omelas is not "vapid" and "irresponsible," but rather mature and profound. She has also acknowledged, however, that her readers are unlikely to believe her assertions, and this passage helps explain why: much of what we view as meaningful (and would therefore expect to see in a truly ideal society) seems to depend on an awareness of pain. Compassion, for instance, typically means empathizing with and responding tenderly towards someone else's suffering—something that would seem to be impossible if the very idea of suffering were foreign to us. In other words, this passage makes it clear that the happiness of Omelas hinges on the child's suffering not only in a practical sense, but also in a psychological (and maybe even metaphysical) sense.