Omelas or America? by Kyra Moore

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a phenomenal piece of literature that I would argue is based on a theme of morality and consciousness. Although this was not my first time reading this story, I still felt the heavy theme of persecution of morality that the book provoked.

The author, Ursula K Le Guin, starts off the work by having the reader intentionally imagine a subjective utopian society based solely on their preferences. An example in the text illustrates this saying, “Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairytale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy birds, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all.” After Le Guin has the reader synthesize their perfect utopian society she then drops the “moral bomb” so to speak- what the utopian is dependent upon. Le Guin goes on to say, “the room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting.” After Le Guin informs the reader of such inhumane treatment the child is receiving, she continues to tell of how the citizens of Omelas feel about their happiness being brutally and inhumanely placed upon the back of a child- “some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness… depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.” I would like to pose the argument that the story and citizens of Omelas can be directly correlated to our current society and our morally selfish tendencies.

It is almost undebatable that our current society, and history tells us that past societies, exist currently or have existed within a hierarchy. Often times within that hierarchy, those who are at the top are immensely content with their conditions and would sacrifice anything for the continuance of those conditions. In present terms, we have seen this in the example of our current prison system being ran as a business resulting in the event of mass incarceration. In past terms, we have seen this in the example of, more or less, the Cherokee removal. These events ultimately transpire due to the fact of those who are in a better position sacrificing the deserved justice of those who are “lower” than them on a hierarchy. The little boy facing inhumane treatment in the story of Omelas can easily be compared to the humans that were brutally forced off of their homeland or the many victims affected by our inefficient prison system. The origin of our country even has been built on these same morally “selfish” concepts.

Lisa Fluet in her work “Ask Me If I Care: Work, Injustice and Other People’s Happiness”” supports this morally selfish concept from an excerpt in her work saying, “happiness for some involves the persecution of others” as well as “the sense that happiness for some can rely upon the unequal distribution of injustice to others is fairly familiar ethical territory in Eliot, whose works evoke “the injustice of happiness, showing what and whom happiness gives up.”

Lisa Fluet said these words in light of the moral theme that Omelas provokes which again can be directly correlated to current American society. There are countless amounts of unethical occurrences in society that can easily mirror the moral dilemma portrayed in Omelas.  

This is a reason why I deem The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas to be such a phenomenal read- it portrays such a heavy moral theme which can be applied to current and past immoral events.

Scholarly Source:

http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.library.umkc.edu/article/546571/pdf