The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas: A Philosophical Analysis

We are first greeted by an exposition that is an attempt to desperately show the

invaluable but now “archaic” joy that the Omelas possessed (Le Guin, 99). The persona would
then rely on another alternative; an axiom about happiness for a mutual understanding in its
philosophical idea, then going in so far as to create blissful imagery which fits both the reader’s
subjectivity on happiness and the bygone joy of the Omelas (100): “Nude priests and priestess
already half in ecstasy ready to copulate with any man or woman” (100), “the faint insistence of
drooz” (101), and even the “sense of victory” or the “celebration of courage” (101). These lines
of thought could be taken as if I were to say, “life is pure suffering,” and I continue to list every
tragic event that has happened in the 21st century. “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival,
the city, the joy?” (101) the persona then asks us, remaining unsatiated from her overall
narrative. For an act in desperation, she implicitly reveals her narratives as nothing more but a
fading myth, with no one else capable of bringing these precious memories to light. With that,
the persona has one more substory: the child in the basement of a beautiful public building.

She describes this heinous room as if it’s a hybrid of a filthy barn and a jail cell (101).
Inside it is the one with the infant mind, doing what an infant would do: picking its nose,
fumbling vaguely, and is unnecessarily afraid of things (102). Treated as if the individual was a
slave; the child was malnourished, revulsed by those who visited, and had no freedom (102).
Everyone knew about the child, including the children of the Omelas, because without this so
called “slave” they were keeping, they wouldn’t learn life the hard way, nor would the very
elated identity of the town exist (102-103). This is where the mystery of the text begins: the joy
of the Omelas had already vanished, so what then, of the child? The interval for this substory of
the child was never mentioned, nor was when the time it did escape. What we know is that the
joy came first, and the escape, second. This distinction is not only important for the final
analysis, but for Benett and Royle (53), a narrative will always be characterized by its
foregrounded series of events or actions connected in time. To simply ignore this rule, is to
make the point of my analysis less convincing. In sustaining the precursor to our answer, is the
ending: Who are the ones who walked away from Omelas?

These are the ones who never return after seeing the child. They’ll release a bit of
temperament, within moments they’ll embark on an interminable excursion beyond the gates,
the farmlands, and eventually to “darkness.” This “darkness” is accordingly indescribable and
less imaginable. To the persona, “it is possible that it doesn’t exist,” but she still thinks that
those who walk away “seem to know where they’re going” (103). What really stands out is how
she worded like a mystery, but what makes the narration for the Omelas and the indescribable
place different is for their empirical evidence. In other words, the persona knows more about
the latter due to her love for the Omelas’ identity. She remains in that city for it contains the
only fleeting memory of what was once important to her, clinging to it and loving the Omelas all
the same. It is an ending that marks the existence and non-existence of 2 worlds.

Let us now return to where we once were, the child being the last piece in our analysis:
We eventually assimilated that the child escaped, but who did it? It can be presumed that
someone took the child while on their way from walking away. As mentioned, no one returned
to the Omelas. What was never mentioned, however, is when exactly the child escaped, only
that the pieces of our accumulated evidence (the persona’s testimonies) points to it happening.
This raises the question: if the child is gone, why is no one admitting such a case? The identity
of the Omelas is what makes it thrive, wouldn’t the citizens know about the situation? Let us
remember this one pivotal point that the short story is making: Those who are living or have
lived in the Omelas only know about the Omelas. I say, this is nothing more but the sole
manipulation of the persona and the suspect for our disillusioned impressions of the narrative.
In narrative theory, this is defined as the ‘story,’ as these are the events or actions which the
narrator would like to believe us occurred (Benett and Royle, 55), but the idea of Narrative
power is also exerted, for it is the point of “making their stories good, by making them
compelling to the point of distraction” (Benett and Royle, 58). The persona justifies the essence
of this “slavery” by romanticizing the joy and the festivals of the Omelas, as seen throughout
the short story. It is in fact true, that the persona also wants the reader to learn about this
whole fiasco about the child as a means of garnering the same hatred to it. She would never
admit the escape due to its devastating effect to the Omelas, the very place she enamored.

With our interpretation, it could be safely said that the story is anti-utilitarianist. On the
other hand, being on the topic of philosophy, one may also be familiar with a certain allegory
which depicts two opposing worlds: the isolated and the one beyond. Many may define Plato’s
Allegory of the Cave for its premises on epistemology, but I also define it as a means of
transcending our limits (identity, meaning, purpose, etc.) as humans. For Le Guin’s story, in so
far as to not detach the anti-utilitarianist idea, is by being self-aware of ourselves and to know
that we can do better. The very abhorrent and spiteful behavior of the persona was paved by
the author to exhibit the stunning flaws of the moral theory. No matter how one would
convolute it, such blatant evil for the selfish desires of ten, a hundred, or more is a disgrace to
the human life. The things we may do might be the easy way out, but does it treat everyone
equally? Our solutions are not limited, and nor is our intellect, as man.
 REFERENCES:
Bennet, Andrew, and Royle, Nicholas. An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and

Theory. 3rd ed., Pearson, 2004. p. 53, 55, 58

Le Guin, Ursula. The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. HarperCollins, 1975. p. 99-103