Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing. In other streets the music beat faster, shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and gray, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. The ringing of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. “ With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. “… But there is one more thing to tell and this is quite incredible…” (LeGuin). But, few as they may be, they are indeed noticed. Ursula K LeGuin is saying that humans are naturally monsters, with few exceptions. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is one giant metaphor of this, represented by the suffering child. At times human greed seems horribly monstrous as it consumes peoples selfishness. People suffer and yet we blog and pretend like it isn’t there.The suffering of innocence is abominably cruel. I won’t turn this into a political rant, but this divide grows wider every day and sometimes its hard to believe that for some factions the brutalisation of the poor isn’t ideological.Īnd yet we accept the price. We have those at the top and we have those at the bottom. We have happiness, wealth, and prosperity - not utopia, particularly not for all - but we have knowingly built this atop suffering, poverty, and helplessness. It can’t be described because we have no concept of such a place - our world, the real world, is reflected uncomfortably in Omelas. Why can’t it be described? Why might it not exist? The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The conclusions are left to the reader - you built this utopia, remember?īut not everyone can endure it.
And this is the price you pay.Ĭan you accept the price? Is the abject suffering of one worth the trade off for prosperity of all others? Especially when the suffering is without explanation to the sufferer - and is contrasted against their vague memory of this not always having been the case, and of them not knowingly having done anything to “deserve” it (whatever you imagine that might possibly be)? Some of them understand why, and some do not, but 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.”Īnd so this is Omelas. It is fed once a day and occasionally the locked door to its prison is opened and eyes peer at it briefly before it is locked away again, with no concept of time or reason. But, brutally, remembers love from its past and doesn’t know why it was taken away. In a cellar of one of the buildings is incarcerated a 10 year old child. The cost of the utopia is known by all, and must be borne by all - but borne most egregiously by one person in particular. As such the world the story unfolds in is somehow ours - and we must take responsibility for what’s going to be revealed in it. If an orgy would help, don’t hesitate.”Īs a reader we’re asked to build this utopia to whatever definition of utopia we currently hold. “I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. It’s not a puritanical place though - one of the funniest lines I’ve seen in a story puts paid to that: There are people at work, people celebrating, lives being enjoyed as some sort of festival was being prepared. Omelas is briefly painted for us as a beautiful, picturesque, timeless utopia set nowhere in particular. Discussed on the podcast Very Bad Wizards a while back, this is an uncomfortable short story with indirect but clear parallels to the world today.Īfter reading the story, I do recommend that you listen to the discussion on the podcast since this addresses a lot of the talking points it raises.
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