The idea of a perfect world is very complex and often confusing to understand; it becomes simpler to imagine such world if suffering existed within it. However, if a perfect world contains suffering, it then becomes flawed. In Ursula Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, the narrator struggles with the problem of creating a realistic ‘perfect world’, and as a solution she has created two contradictory worlds in which the existence of one is dependant on the other. the narrator provides many versions of Omelas when she changes details about the city, however, these types of worlds seem to fall into two opposing worlds based on the concept of good versus evil. In doing this, she constructs a world of happiness and a world of suffering;
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It is appropriate that the narrator mentions the idea of ‘no guilt’ in the text, “One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt.” (Le Guin 6). However, there is evidence that the people experience guilt when mention of the suffering child arises in the narrative, “Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox.” (Le Guin 7). This paradox being that the source of their happiness is what causes them to be upset. The narrator tries to maintain the idea of two worlds that completely contradict each other; it is a vital part of her strategy to make Omelas an understandable and imaginable reality. Therefore, to restore the ‘perfectness’ of Omelas, the citizens realize why the child must live in the conditions in which it does and the sacrifice that is being made, and no longer feel remorse or regret, “Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives.” (Le Guin
It is appropriate that the narrator mentions the idea of ‘no guilt’ in the text, “One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt.” (Le Guin 6). However, there is evidence that the people experience guilt when mention of the suffering child arises in the narrative, “Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox.” (Le Guin 7). This paradox being that the source of their happiness is what causes them to be upset. The narrator tries to maintain the idea of two worlds that completely contradict each other; it is a vital part of her strategy to make Omelas an understandable and imaginable reality. Therefore, to restore the ‘perfectness’ of Omelas, the citizens realize why the child must live in the conditions in which it does and the sacrifice that is being made, and no longer feel remorse or regret, “Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives.” (Le Guin