37 pages • 1 hour read
Ursula K. Le GuinThe Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1973A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
The Narrator
The narrator is the only "character" in Le Guin's story who might be said to have a distinct personality. Because it is clear that Omelas is a product of the narrator's imagination, the choices she makes about what to include in the utopian worldspeak to her beliefs about happiness itself. We know, for instance, that she is not "puritanical" andthinks that sensory pleasures like sex and drooz—a non-addictive drug—should be freely available in Omelas. On the other hand, she evidently does not think a purely hedonistic life would truly qualify as a happy one, because she suggests that Omelas is also renowned for its art and scientific knowledge.
Perhaps the most significant thing about the narrator, however, is her insistence that her readers take part in "creating" Omelas. At a basic level, she does this to ensure that we truly believe in the happiness of Omelas, having helped design it ourselves. The invitation, however, also ensures that readers of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" are implicated in the scenario the story describes: in more or less overt ways, many people base a certain amount of their well-being on the exploitation or dismissal of others. That said, the narrator does not condemn her readers, or even the people of Omelas. On the contrary, she maintains that there is great value and wisdom in happiness, making the choice between it and justice all the more difficult.In fact, the narrator implicitly includes herself among the group that would choose to remain in Omelas, saying that the regions beyond Omelas are "even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness." The narrator's tolerance, in other words, perhaps reflects the fact that she faces the same moral dilemma her readers do.
The People of Omelas
Other than perhaps the abandoned child, there areno real characters in Omelas itself. Although the narrator mentions particular people a handful of times, describing (for instance) an old man with crumbs in his beard, she does not flesh out the personalities of any of these figures. Instead, these "characters" tend to function as part of the story's setting: the boy playing a flute, for instance, forms part of a backdrop full of beautiful sights and sounds.
The narrator does, however, describe the collective character of Omelas’s citizens in some detail. Above all, she insists that their happiness is not simply ignorance. The people of Omelas are "mature, intelligent, passionate adults" who lead rich and full lives. As it turns out, however, the "maturity" of their happiness is at least partly dependent on their knowledge of the child's suffering; without this, and the compassion it engenders, the story suggests that their lives would in fact be "vapid" and "irresponsible."
The decision to treat the people of Omelas as a group underscores the central ethical question in the story: whether the happiness of the many justifies the mistreatment of a single, isolated individual. With that said, the residents of Omelas do not remain an undifferentiated group for the entirety of the story, because the narrator closes by explaining that an inhabitant of Omelas will occasionally decide to leave. She does not provide any insight into what these people might be thinking beyond the fact that their decision is a response to the child's plight; presumably, they have concluded that no amount of well-being, harmony, or progress can supersede the child's right to be treated fairly and humanely. It is striking, however, that the narrator describes the ones who leave as always departing alone; perhaps, in rejecting the utilitarian logic that keeps the child imprisoned for the greater good of the community, these former inhabitants of Omelas have become particular individuals in a way that would not otherwise be possible.
The Child
On the most literal level, the abandoned child is a person whose suffering allows the rest of Omelas to flourish: it spends its life entirely in a small, dark, and dirty room, subsisting on half portions of cornmeal and sitting naked in its own waste. Significantly, the narrator only ever refers to the child as "it," implying that it has been dehumanized to such an extent that it is in some sense no longer even a person. Nevertheless, the child does retain the capacity to suffer, and thus lives in a constant state of fear and misery.
According to the narrator, most residents of Omelas eventually "perceive the terrible justice of reality" and tacitly agree to abide by the "terms" that require the child's suffering in exchange for Omelas’s happiness. At first glance, most readers of the story are likely to find this horrible and to write off the reasoning the people of Omelas resort toas excuse-making. Digging deeper, however, the abandoned child is not simply the price the residents of Omelas pay for their happiness: it is a symbol for any and all of the cruelty and injustice Le Guin's readers tolerate in the name of their own well-being. If we think of the child as representing (for example) an underpaid worker making a product we enjoy, it becomes clear that many if not most of us are willing to compromise our views on morality and human rights. In fact, we can see the child as symbolizing that internal process as well: in accepting the oppression or neglect of others, we are perhaps sacrificing part of what makes us human.
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By Ursula K. Le Guin
