Jefferson Flanders Ursula K. Le Guin S The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas PDF

8/5/2021 Ursula K.
Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” – Jefferson Flanders
Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones

Who Walk Away from Omelas”
JULY 26, 2006
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We have been drawn to stories from the time our ancestors huddled around the fire
and listened and learned and were entertained and enthralled by the tales of others.
Those stories with mythic qualities have even more

power, for they tap into our collective unconscious,
those memories that seem hard-coded into us. The
Hero’s Journey, what Joseph Campbell called the
“monomyth,” borrowing from James Joyce, has always
seemed right to me in its depiction of an underlying
collective memory that storytellers tap into
(Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic
Structure For Writers admirably decodes literary myth-
making with its incisive analysis of both classic
literature and more popular fiction). The power of storytelling and myth is real,
whether or not Jung’s theory about archetypes is correct. We respond instinctively
to certain symbolic tales, and find literary themes that address elemental human
concerns to be compelling.
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8/5/2021 Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” – Jefferson Flanders
Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” is—she
has written—based on the “psychomyth” of the scapegoat; she says she was inspired
by William James’ statement that “one could not accept a happiness shared with
millions if the condition of that happiness were the suffering of one lonely soul.” The
story, which won the Hugo Award, has been included in a number of literary short
story anthologies—even though the prolific Le Guin is best known for her science
fiction and fantasy—and it surfaces on the reading list in some English and
Philosophy classes.
The story is very simple. Le Guin introduces us to an exotic, mystical city, Omelas,
“bright-towered by the sea,” whose fortunate residents (“the people of Omelas are
happy people”) enjoy a Utopian existence, with plentiful creature comforts (drugs,
sex, and music–if not rock-and-roll), magnificent public buildings, ideal weather, and
without “monarchy and slavery… the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret
police, and the bomb.” And, as the narrator hastens to tell us, without guilt. (Is
Omelas the model society Swedish socialists thought they were building?)
But this fairy tale has a flaw. This society is founded on the misery and degradation
of one child, imprisoned in a dirty, dark cellar room furnished with a bucket and two
mops, kept from human contact and sunlight. (A number of critics have seen Christ-
like symbolism in the description of the child). What is worse, everyone in this
“joyous city” knows about the child; they are complicit in its inhumane treatment.
…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.
It is carefully explained to every citizen of the city that freeing the child will destroy
all “the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas.” So, while they may come to
view the child, no one intervenes.
And it is easy to rationalize the situation with a coldly logical Utilitarian cost-benefit
analysis. The narrator tells us that “the terrible justice of reality” is that this child
has been so damaged by its environment that freedom would be relatively
meaningless. Indeed, perhaps (drawing from Eastern religious thought) the

wretchedness of the child makes possible the beauty of Omelas by stirring the
compassion of the city’s denizens.
Except, we are told, there are some who cannot accept the rationalizations and the
treatment of the child. These are “the ones who walk away,” who are so disgusted
and troubled by the “wretched child” in the basement that they leave. Where they
are bound when they leave Omelas is not revealed, but “they seem to know where
they are going.”
There is some ambiguity about their departure. Unlike Henrik Ibsen’s “Enemy of the
People,” where we can identify with the heroic Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who risks all
to expose the contaminated water supply in his town, the “ones who walk away” are
—by comparison—passive, not active, in their resistance. By choosing exile they
have tacitly accepted the continued depravity of the child’s imprisonment. They
have walked away.
What should we think of those who do leave? Are they to be admired or pitied?
Have they just enough moral clarity to separate themselves from the ongoing evil at
the heart of Omelas, but not enough courage to resist?
The acceptance of the necessary evil, always in the name of the greater good, has a
long (if not admirable) history. It was the argument used by otherwise thoughtful
American Southerners to justify slavery. In the days before the collapse of
Communism, I remember those on the Left who would quote Mao that you could
not make an omelette without breaking a few eggs–a rationalization of the horrid
things done to the Chinese people in order to create a “soclalist paradise.” There is
always a justification available.
In portraying the “happy people of Omelas” Le Guin borrows a bit from an earlier
science fiction master, H.G. Wells. The Eloi, his hedonistic “beautiful people” of
802,701 AD in “The Time Machine,” are also apathetic; they passively allow the evil
race of subterranean Morlocks to periodically consume some of their own people in
exchange for their comfort. In the 1960 film version of the novel, Wells’ hero, The
Time Traveller (played by Rod Taylor) incites the Eloi to successfully resist the
Morlocks (blue monsterish creatures designed to scare millions of American
children).
Le Guin will have none of the Hollywood heroics. Her story—this myth of Omelas—
has no figure who prizes justice above the status quo in Utopia. There is no one
saying “Fiat justitia, ruat coelum“—“Let justice be done, though Heavens fall.”
I think she sells us short with this—by us, I mean humans. Doesn’t history teach that
there will always be someone who resists injustice (real or perceived)? We are too
cranky a lot, in some ways, too volatile, too violent. Too skeptical of authority. We
are not the Eloi, nor the “happy people of Omelas.” We don’t always settle for
scapegoats.
Where in Omelas is Spartacus? Andrei Sakharov? Joan of Arc? Cesar Chavez?

Harriet Tubman? Rosa Park? William Wallace? Oskar Schindler? Aung San Suu Kyi?
Nelson Mandela? Lech Walesa? Whether you accept force as an appropriate way to
confront injustice and oppression, or believe only in non-violent means of
resistance, where are those who say no, the individuals who resolutely confront
that which is wrong? Don’t we have something hard coded in us that occasionally
drives us to fight for human dignity? True, courage is often in short supply, and
compromise—looking the other way—is a classic survival technique. But I think of
the times when someone has refused to get in line when the personal and societal
consequences were severe: The Ones Who Stay and Fight.
So while “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” cannot be faulted for its
technique or structure, nor for its prose, there is something hollow, something
writerly and contrived, about Le Guin’s tale. Or perhaps more precisely, there is
something inhuman about it: the people of Omelas do not share the DNA of homo
sapiens, or at least not the ones trapped in this stage of our evolutionary history.
Jefferson Flanders is author of the Cold War thriller Herald Square.
The Amazon.com link for the reviewed story: Ursula K. Le Guin: “The Wind’s Twelve
Quarters”
Copyright © 2006 Jefferson Flanders
All rights reserved

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8/5/2021 Ursula K.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones

Those stories with mythic qualities have even more

meaningless. Indeed, perhaps (drawing from Eastern religious thought) the

Where in Omelas is Spartacus? Andrei Sakharov? Joan of Arc? Cesar Chavez?

Jefferson Flanders is author of the Cold War thriller Herald Square.

Copyright © 2006 Jefferson Flanders

All rights reserved

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