The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
If I described a city to you where everyone was happy would you believe in that city? What would it take for you to believe in the joy of these people?
The Facts Text: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Author: Ursula K Le Guin
Genre: Speculative fiction, Philosophical Year: 1973
Available: Public Domain (Free!)
Trigger Warning: This story depicts extreme neglect/abuse of a child. Mentioned only in my post, described in some detail in the story itself.
The Fiction
I am a huge fan of genre fiction, specifically the speculative fiction of fantasy and science fiction. I am fascinated by the concepts of world building. As a writer I love the idea of building cities, cultures, laws, and traditions out of nothing but imagination. In my first year short fiction writing class in university I remember the professor telling us that fantasy was nearly impossible to write in the short story medium because the "short" requirement of short fiction means that there is rarely enough space in a limited world count to create, describe, and play in a new world.
This week I ask the question: does the short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin manage that nearly impossible task of building and exploring a sci-fi/fantasy new world with an astonishingly small word count in the short story medium?
Le Guin describes the utopian city of Omelas; a city in which the narrator claims the people are genuinely happy and joyful. The narrator fights against the perception that if the people are happy they must be "simple" folk. The narrator shows us the city celebrating the Festival of Summer but discourages the reader from dismissing the description of the city as something from a fairytale. The people are not barbarians, and not naïve. The people of Omelas do not have slavery, or a monarchy oppressing the people, or a corrupt clergy. They are a complex society, sexually free, possessing fun recreational drugs (although most people don't need to alter their moods), and have whatever level of technology the reader would like to imagine makes them able to live comfortably.
Knowing we don't quite believe in this seemingly perfect society the narrator tells us how the people of Omelas are so happy: in a basement in one of the houses in the city is a child horribly neglected and abused. The people all know the child is there, and they are told that their happiness relies on the child's suffering. If the child is rescued then the happiness of the city will be destroyed. We are told that while most young people when they learn this are first angry and upset, they eventually rationalize that the good of the many out weighs the suffering of one singular child.
In the last paragraph of the story the narrator tells us one other thing: while most people of the city live with the suffering of the child a few after learning of its existence begin to walk. They walk alone through the streets of Omelas, and out into the world beyond. The narrator can not tell us where the ones who walk away from Omelas end up, saying that it must be a city even harder to imagine then the city of happiness, but these people seem to know where they are going.
The Feeling I can't explain how much I love this story (although I will attempt to). Admittedly we're back in my preferred genre and that might be part of my enjoyment, but beyond just my joy in good world building I agree so much with some of the philosophical ideas Ursula K Le Guin proposes in this story.
Le Guin is aware when describing or asking a reader to imagine a happy city full of complex people that readers will be skeptical. Of this skepticism of happiness she writes possibly one of my favourite quotes I've encountered in this sixteen week project: "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain." I'd wear this quote on a t-shirt, I'd write it as a review of every edgy, dark, gritty, pain reveling 'critically acclaimed' story of the last decade. This quote alone makes me want to read everything Le Guin has ever written.
This story made me a fan is what I'm trying to say.
Beyond exploring our skepticism of happiness in stories The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is of course philosophical at heart. The moral quandary of the tale is complex: if you could guarantee everyone's happiness at the cost of the eternal misery of one child would you do it? If you do then you, and the people you care about, and your community will be happy and prosperous at the cost of one innocent child's misery. If you rescue the child from their unearned fate then you damn you, and the people you care about, and your entire community to ruin. Whatever choice you make someone suffers.
There is one other choice, as Le Guin proposes in the final paragraph of this story: you could not choose at all. . You don't save the child subsequently dooming your city, but you don't live in the world built on its misery either. You could walk away
The world building of this story is beautiful. Le Guin's prose evokes specific images of a happy utopia during its Festival of Summer, while also leaving deliberate gaps in her world building for the reader to imagine the happy city themselves. She reflects on joy, and our attitudes toward joy, and asks a fascinating moral question.
We don't know what happens to the people who walk away from Omelas, where they end up, or what they become. Le Guin tells us of their leaving and leaves the rest as a blank to be filled in. Le Guin builds half a bridge with her imagination, but forces us to build the other half with our own if we want answers as to what is on the other side.
So it is possible to write an incredible speculative fiction short story, providing of course one is one of the most prolific sci-fi/fantasy writers in the canon Ursula K Le Guin.
Which really only leaves us with one more question: if you found yourself in Omelas...what would you do?
Σχόλια