Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is a short story detailing the existence of the fictional utopian town, Omelas, and the dark secret it contains. This secret being that the society keeps a suffering child starved and locked away in order to ensure Omelas prosperity. Le Guin poses a stark contrast between the societal happines and the torture of the child in order to present the audience with a moral dilemma that asks one question: is it truly moral to put the good of all above the suffering of one?

Le Guin begins the story by describing Omelas as a utopia. The audience is taken through a bird’s eye tour of the town, with it being described as “bright towered by the sea” and full sounds such as the “clamor” of bells. Le Guin takes the time to impress upon the readers that Omelas is unlike any other place, that the residents are truly happy and prosperous. In order to provide a true contrast to the child who is later described in the story, the audience is meant to view Omelas as a true culmination of everything any society wishes it was. Le Guin, however, is insistent upon the fact that the Omelas residents “were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy” which hints at the complications laying under the town’s sunny disposition. 

The story then travels to a small, windowless room where a child who is ten but looks six due to malnutrition and neglect resides. This child is revealed to be the presumed single thing keeping Omelas a utopia. Its suffering was to protect the society, ensure “[t]heir happiness, the beauty of their city” which “depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery”. The child is fed corn meal once a day and sits in its own excrement while the citizens of Omelas enjoy spacious homes and festivals. The contrast could not be any more stark. Furthermore, all of the Omelas residents are aware of the child’s existence, even go to see it as a right of passage. “They all know it is there . . . but they all understand that their happiness . . . would be destroyed” if the child were to be freed, so no one aids the child. The Omelas people decide unilaterally that the good of themselves, of all those who reside in Omelas is more important than saving an innocent child from suffering. There are many in the town who have trouble accepting this, who rear their heads against the injustice, even some “Walk Away From Omelas”, choosing to remove themselves from the equation in order to not have to participate in the injustice. However, no one frees the child. Even those who disagree do so without actually acting against Omelas, which shows how societal obligations can override moral opinions.

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