The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Last Updated: 23 Mar 2023
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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Do you find in the story any implied criticism of our own society? In our society we can observe wealth and poverty, happiness and sadness, truths and lies, love and hate. All of those pairs are present every new day that comes in the world we live in and almost always they are together. In the case of the story “ The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K.

Le Guin, it presents a society in which a city called Omelas’ happiness is possible by having one child live in darkness, “fear, malnutrition, and neglect. ” In the city everyone knows the unfair life that this child has, even so, they do nothing about the situation. Why? If they choose to help him or her that is in bad conditions, the entire town would lose its “prosperity and delight”. The tale illustrates a group of people enslaved, like the child, by these terms that must be followed to keep the “wonderful” city.

The story and its description can be perceived as a critique of our own society, because it reflects the erroneous and unjust actions witnessed in our cities, colonies and countries. Approximately in the middle of the narration before the curse of Omelas is described Le Guin implies this criticism when is said: “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing. With these words the author asks if the readers believe in that “fairytale” city to let us know that she knows that we are thinking of the story as a complete fantasy, but also this quote gives us a foreshadow that the narration is going to take a drastic turn and some readers may also think to discover that what is going to happen next is going to be more credible, and it could amazingly be something a reader in the society we live on can relate to.

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Indeed, it helped connect with the story because it can be found similarities with the plot of the short story and throughout our history leaders that have abused of their powers to get something that benefits them, like Hitler and the abominating treatment he had against the Jews. This life that has Omelas of needing to have suffering in order have happiness, can also be related to our societies action, for example, the aspiration of world peace through world wars. These are ideals that contradict themselves by wanting to get righteous goal with an evil journey.

The ends should never justify the means. Many times standards become absurd because a person does not follow his or her belief like a pastor does not do what he preaches or the affliction that pass those in need with no help; this ways reveal the wrongness and the injustice of the society that we have. We are saying that there cannot be right without wrong. We say that there cannot be joy without suffering. All of this we say is why we have ones who walk away from Omelas.

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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. (2017, Jan 03). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas/

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