Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

While there may not be a child hidden somewhere in a shack alone and suffering for the sake of the overall population’s wellbeing as Ursula Le Guin describes in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” in reality, there are always people who are in pain and people who are not in pain. In the real world, I believe the closest thing to the situation Le Guin describes in her work is slavery, a concept through which one person (or group of people) is put through agony and hardship all for the benefit of another, usually receiving nothing in return. Le Guin received her initial inspiration for “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” from a quote by William James which basically expresses that people cannot and should not feel genuine happiness that comes …show more content…
A very key part of Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies” is the concept that when one person or group wins, another must lose in one way or another. McIntosh expresses this throughout her work by saying things like “I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege; which puts me at an advantage” (140). In this type of situation, the majority of our society most definitely still contains certain instances in which William James’ quote can apply. Looking at the idea this way, I agree with McIntosh that many of us do not even realize that some of the good things we experience in our lives actually may come as a result of some possible bad things in another person’s life. Unfortunately, until reading McIntosh’s words, I had never really realized this either, and I am sure many other people are the same way. In this kind of scenario, I actually believe that our overall society tends to fail to meet William James’