Critical Analysis Of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

How is it that we are able to distinguish the feelings we have? When we feel anger there has to be a time where we did not feel anger and instead felt calm. When we feel happy it is because we are not suffering in that particular moment. One feeling cannot exist without the existence of a polar opposite feeling. In Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” she depicts a pseudo-utopian society where there is prosperity for all, but one person. This person’s misery is the foundation for the rest of the city’s peace and development. Everything has a price. Whether it be the clothes we wear, the food we eat, or the water we drink. There cannot be happiness without suffering. Peace cannot exist without war. There cannot be light without the dark. The story of Omelas is about citizens who live in the light and are confronted with a horrendous dark secret. The city of Omelas is a place where its citizens are happy and joyful. The storyteller characterizes these people as “They were not naive and happy children - though their children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were …show more content…
In Jerre Collins’ literary criticism “ Leaving Omelas: Question of Faith and Understanding” he agrees that “the rational rings hollow because the narrator has told us earlier that the child had not always been imprisoned in the dark room and ‘can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice,’ … an alternative to is present suffering and want that alternative. The bad faith of the Omelasians’ rationalization is implied”. Collins is telling us that the people of Omelas know the extent of the child’s intelligence, that it can speak and remember it’s mother’s voice. Therefore the moralization of the citizens is unethical and even unjustified. To the people of Omelas however a single person suffering is better than multiple people