Ursula Le Guin illustrates a hypothetical city where the happiness of an entire society depends on the eternal agony of one child. In her narration of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, she begins by describing the gathering of city people to a festival. The author maintains a rather vague depiction of the authenticity of the city, claiming that the details of their relation of technology, drugs, or sex for example to ours are simply irrelevant. The main importance that Ursula Le Guin stresses that her audience understands is that people of Omelas are happy. The source of the happiness exist not as result of things necessarily, they are simply happy. There exist no purpose for soldiers, bombs, priest, or powerful Kings to keep the city
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Ursula Le Guin pronounces that in a small and dark corner of the city where only a “little light seeps in dustily between cracks” exist a child that lives each day in misery (Le Guin, 265). No one speaks to the child but people do go to view the reality of the stories that were told to them by their parents as children. Most of the viewers are young, and not all of them even understand why the child is there but they all however understand that “the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships…. [and even] the kindly weathers of their skies” depend solely on the “child’s abominable misery” (Le Guin, 265). There is not an accurate perception of time or reality in the child’s mind and the most frightening thing that the child encounters is the mop it shares the closet with. The last insight Ursula Le Guin provides of the city of Omelas is of those that walk away from it. Occasionally after visiting the child, a person in Omelas may become silent for a short time. Then generally in the midst of the night they walk from their house, either to the North or the South, and continue on through the gates of the city off in to the mountains. The author claims that she lacks any words to describe the place where one goes if they leave Omelas, mentioning the possibility it may be nonexistent …show more content…
Vital to utilitarianism is Mill’s theory of morality relies on consequentialism. The idea of consequentialism exhibits the idea that with every action, the morality of that action relies in the results or the consequences. An action could serve as either a mean to more pleasure, or a mean to greater pain. Either way, the action serves as a mean to the greater or lesser outcome. Therefore, whatever actions serves as a mean to the greatest happiness must be declared as the moral action. Mill’s theory not only examines ones individual happiness but also forces one to examine the “association between his own happiness and the good of the whole” (Mills, 17). For example, a bystander by a train discovers that the train track has broken and if the train shall continue it will kill the 200 people aboard the train if it maintains motion and consequently crashes. The bystander has a choice to either let the train continue and kill the 200 passengers, or he can choose to throw the man next to him, a complete stranger, on to the tracks and that person, but him alone, will die instead and the train will not crash. Ethical Hedonism is additionally a vital concept to Mill’s theory of morality. Ethical Hedonism describes happiness, as the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong. For the pursuit of happiness is really just the “ desire for pleasure inherent in
Ursula Le Guin pronounces that in a small and dark corner of the city where only a “little light seeps in dustily between cracks” exist a child that lives each day in misery (Le Guin, 265). No one speaks to the child but people do go to view the reality of the stories that were told to them by their parents as children. Most of the viewers are young, and not all of them even understand why the child is there but they all however understand that “the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships…. [and even] the kindly weathers of their skies” depend solely on the “child’s abominable misery” (Le Guin, 265). There is not an accurate perception of time or reality in the child’s mind and the most frightening thing that the child encounters is the mop it shares the closet with. The last insight Ursula Le Guin provides of the city of Omelas is of those that walk away from it. Occasionally after visiting the child, a person in Omelas may become silent for a short time. Then generally in the midst of the night they walk from their house, either to the North or the South, and continue on through the gates of the city off in to the mountains. The author claims that she lacks any words to describe the place where one goes if they leave Omelas, mentioning the possibility it may be nonexistent …show more content…
Vital to utilitarianism is Mill’s theory of morality relies on consequentialism. The idea of consequentialism exhibits the idea that with every action, the morality of that action relies in the results or the consequences. An action could serve as either a mean to more pleasure, or a mean to greater pain. Either way, the action serves as a mean to the greater or lesser outcome. Therefore, whatever actions serves as a mean to the greatest happiness must be declared as the moral action. Mill’s theory not only examines ones individual happiness but also forces one to examine the “association between his own happiness and the good of the whole” (Mills, 17). For example, a bystander by a train discovers that the train track has broken and if the train shall continue it will kill the 200 people aboard the train if it maintains motion and consequently crashes. The bystander has a choice to either let the train continue and kill the 200 passengers, or he can choose to throw the man next to him, a complete stranger, on to the tracks and that person, but him alone, will die instead and the train will not crash. Ethical Hedonism is additionally a vital concept to Mill’s theory of morality. Ethical Hedonism describes happiness, as the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong. For the pursuit of happiness is really just the “ desire for pleasure inherent in