Whenever this story is brought up almost everyone seems to interpret it as a moral dilemma, asking the reader: Would you want this child to suffer for the collective happiness? But IN MY OPINION, I think that's not even close to just what the author is trying to ask. If not it would pretty much just be an upscaled version of the trolley problem. I think in actuality the story is a deconstruction of the idea that joy can only come with pain, that a society that doesn't rely on someone's suffering can't exist. And I also think the story is trying to hold a mirror up to the reader to show us how ridiculous it is that we think a society without major pain isn't possible.
Here is something the author points out near the beginning of the story: "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 […] We can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy." She then keeps describing this heavenly town before saying this: "Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing." Most people are conditioned to believe that someone needs to suffer for this world to go round. So she adds in this child that needs to get tortured for the citizens to keep their joy. Suddenly the story is more believable to us, and we are more easily immersed into this world. I think this is the first question the story asks us: Why is a society with only happiness more unimaginable to us than one where a child needs to get randomly tortured?"
I think the people that walk away from Omelas aren't abandoning society to live in the woods Ted Kaczynski style, they're leaving because they envision something most of us can't: a better city, where all the same joy is possible, but no child is tortured. At multiple points she describes somewhere where there is only joy as "unimaginable", and again at the end she says this: "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."
So all in all it kind of bothers me when people jump to saying that they would stay in Omelas. Because most of the people who say this seem to accept at face value that this child needs to get tortured for the collective happiness. And while this is certainly true for the city of Omelas, the story also hints very strongly at there being other, better cities where there is no pointless suffering.
Obviously there is a clear parallel between Omelas and our world. In real life there are people that suffer to make other people's lives easier. In real life there are some (capitalism enjoyers, perhaps) who know about child labor, slavery, exploitation, but they don't try to change it, because they think that it's the best system possible, and that this immense suffering is necessary, They've seen the child, and they choose to stay in Omelas. But here is where the metaphor gets blurred for most: In real life you can't really "walk away" from society. So I think the way that walking away from Omelas translates to real life, is those who try to make society better, those who envision a system where children don't have to suffer and exploitation doesn't need to take place. But this type of change (revolutionary, perhaps), is certainly less assured than the stable mix of pain and pleasure we currently have. As the author puts it: "They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back." And the way I interpret it, they might either find a wonderful new city where all the same joy is possible but no one has to suffer, or they will find something worse than Omelas, but it's probably worth a try.
by ItsMeSharpy
32 Comments
I don’t think most people are wrong in saying the story is mainly about the moral dilemma that each citizen there had to face. It leaves the ending open to further analysis, but don’t spend further time or words on it.
But I agree with you that there are additional interesting issues that the story asks, such as that which you bring up.
I enjoyed the following take on the story too.
Why don’t we just kill the kid in the Omelas hole, by Isabel J. Kim:
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/
Your last paragraph addresses the real point to the story. We all live in Omelas. We are all equally guilty. Our modern comforts are built on a foundational suffering of cheap labor and exploitation. And very, very few of us are strong enough to walk away.
[“But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qs3GlNZMhY)
I think this is a good analysis. Also funny how Le Guin herself said, as quoted in your post;
> “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”
And now, the main focus of analysis of the story seems to be on the child itself, and whether or not you yourself would stay and why or why not.
Your perspective is very insightful. I believe I agree.
I think your analysis is pretty spot on, at least from my own interpretation of the text.
Thank you for this. It’s a good analysis.
I have heard a totally different take, but instead the main point is to question the line between utopia and dystopia, especially in the original definition of dystopias as “bad utopia’s” – ie worlds that were presented as perfect/deliberately designed, but to some of the citizens and especially to the reader, actually sounded pretty bad. Omelas is initially presented as a utopia, but then we learn its secret, and it becomes a question about whether it really is a utopia, or a dystopia, or both to different people. I believe the story is inspired by some writings about utopianism and scapegoats which posed a similar question.
This is basically a metaphor for whole “We live in capitalism” quote. It is not prescribing revolutionary change per se, but rather disillusionment with any system that requires some amount of suffering because this disillusionment makes people try to imagine better ways of doing things.
A story can do more than one thing at once. Omelas as moral philosophy lesson isn’t just a valid reading, it’s one that [Le Guin herself](https://www.awpwriter.org/magazine_media/writers_chronicle_view/2293/an_interview_with_ursula_k._le_guin) endorsed: “It poses a classic moral problem very clearly.”
The story is also a vehicle for literary criticism (or meta-criticism), describing the way that utopianism in literature (and a literature of positivity, hopefulness, nonviolence, etc. more broadly) is denigrated, disregarded, dismissed as “unserious.” There are political and psychological dimensions to this line of argument, too, but I think it’s *mostly* an argument about the critical and popular response to fiction, especially genre fiction. More relevant now, in the era of ubiquitous dreary apocalyptic misery, then ever before!
It’s *also* a pretty straightforward political allegory. Le Guin was an anarchist; Omelas is a far-left attack on liberalism and social democracy. Omelas isn’t fascist, it isn’t totalitarian, it isn’t a hyper-capitalist hellscape. It isn’t the United States. It’s an ideal social democracy. It’s Norway. And Norway and Norwegian social democracy, to an anarchist, are still unacceptable. Norway’s prosperity and peace and egalitarianism depend on both massive fossil-fuel wealth and the exploitation and exclusion of billions of poor people outside Norway, who make Norwegians’ smartphones and flat-pack furniture and cheap clothes, etc. There is no version of capitalism that does not depend on somebody, somewhere (realistically, billions of somebodies) being exploited, abused, and immiserated.
(Norwegians: sorry to pick on you. We’re all guilty!)
Okay, I just went back and re-read Omelas.
Your general interpretation was mine as well: the story isn’t primarily about a dystopia; it’s about a conversation between the narrator and the reader. The narrator believes that there needs to be some kind of evil or pain for the reader to believe in Omelas, so they *add* a child just as they encourage the reader to add or subtract technology according to what best helps them imagine the place.
People often assume you’re *supposed* to identify with the ones who walk away. That makes some sense if you believe it’s about a moral dilemma, but that’s less clear in a metatextual interpretation where rejecting Omelas is what led to the inclusion of the child in the first place. The narrator leaves their destination ambiguous and doesn’t really know where the walkers are going, only that they *seem* to have a destination they’re heading for:
>The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us that the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Once again, it’s largely up to the reader to fill in the details as best they can imagine, but most readers who reject Omelas probably don’t have an alternative in mind. Like the narrator, they can’t describe it at all. I’ve seen people point out that the ones who walk away don’t actually do anything to end the child’s suffering. Arguably then, this better destination *also* exists because of the child. If not for their suffering, there would have been nothing to reject and none of these people would have left Omelas.
If it’s up to the reader though, and the reader has already rejected the reality of “the city of happiness”, they’re probably headed for more of the same because any time they find Eden, the reader will be there to add a serpent.
Your reading is far more consistent with Le Guin’s other work than the usual “trolley problem” reading. She was a pretty radical political leftist/anarchist who wrote some science fiction books (such as The Dispossessed, The Word for World is Forest, and The Eye of the Heron) which were explicitly about presenting alternatives to the assumptions we usually make about politics. Even her fantasy, like The Tombs of Atuan, often features people questioning the foundational elements of their society and coming to reject their society’s assumptions about what is and is not possible, often after realizing that those assumptions are causing some deep harm.
Your reading is also more consistent with this famous quote from her speech at the 2014 National Book Awards: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
In that context, it’s very hard for me to believe that Le Guin wrote this story simply to ask readers “would you accept the suffering of the child, or would you leave Omelas?” and I find readings of the story in that mode to be pretty surface level and inattentive to the first half of the story. I think she’s challenging the limits of our imagination, as you say. She’s illustrating how inescapable the foundational harms of our world feel (such as capitalism) by highlighting the fact that we struggle to imagine even a fantasy world existing without some kind of suffering at the heart of it.
The ones who walk away are refusing to partake in the joys brought about by the suffering child. They will not build the same society without the suffering child, it is not possible. Instead, they will all suffer their fair amount and will all enjoy their fair amount. Noone will have what they haven’t earned.
>but it’s probably worth a try.
It’s not that it is probably worth a try. The people who walk away have realized something that they cannot unknow. Where they go and what they do is impossible to know because Omelas is a closed society. But they cannot go back because there is no way of not knowing what they now know.
It gets at the whole point of the story: Tales of pure happiness are dull and unrealistic, but so are tales of needless suffering. The real magic to write about is on those whose minds change, even when they should have no reason to do so.
I thought of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas as an allegory about Capitalism. In a capitalist model someone has to suffer the indignities and pain of doing the lowliest jobs with no comfort so that others can live a paradise away from the painful stuff. Example: As an American, I have never slaughtered an animal, but I eat meat. I love animals but not enough to stop eating meat. The butcher and the cow can both be considered the suffering child in this example. I am living in a paradise where I don’t have to be a butcher to get meat and when I interact with animals I don’t have to think about the experience of the slaughtered animal. I can pretend my meat grows on trees. There are many examples like this in a capitalist economy.
I wonder, what makes you think that society without suffering can exist in real life? I find Omelas purely hypothetical.
> So she adds in this child that needs to get tortured for the citizens to keep their joy. Suddenly the story is more believable to us
Nope, it’s still 100% unbelievable.
Happiness isn’t stupid and utopia isn’t stupid. But people always had problems. Illnesses, death, resource scarcity, and so on and so forth. Good utopia (in my opinion) should show us how society would deal with these problems. I think it’s similar to the falsifiability principle in science. To “prove” utopia, author should be able to look at it critically. Omelas is just a society where no problems arise. Which is completely understandable – after all, “The ones who walk away from Omelas” is a very short fable.
To be clear, I am not criticising Le Guin – in The Disposessed she described two different societies with their own problems perfectly. As a result, a lot of people (myself included) would never want to live on Anarres.
> In real life there are some (capitalism enjoyers, perhaps) who know about child labor, slavery, exploitation, but they don’t try to change it, because they think that it’s the best system possible, and that this immense suffering is necessary
“The Disposessed” is only book that I’ve read that contains somewhat realistic description of post-capitalistic society (that’s why I respect Le Guin very much).
It’s also interesting in that Omelas is set up within the text as just a thought problem – it’s not real, ever, and the fact that Le Guin asks us to put our own favourite things in it that might buck the fairytale image of a utopian society (like drugs or orgies) just helps reinforce the message that Omelas is a fiction.
I didn’t read Omelas when I was young, so I only came to it after seeing people talk about how messed up it was and how it had really left this giant impact on them. Lots of discussion about the Child and the “correct” response and the bleakness of it all.
So I was genuinely very surprised when I finally got round to reading it and I discovered that there was a whole first half – of the author talking to the reader – that none of its readers online seemed to discuss at all. The visceral horror of the child’s fate (or the response to walk away) had totally eclipsed the rest of the text.
And I think this fixation with the fate of the child is an example of where thought-experiments and utilitarianism kind of go awry. Omelas is absorbing because it offers us a kind of satisfaction in the horrible stakes it sets up: one child is horrendously neglected so that everyone else in that society doesn’t. You can quibble about the terms — where does the child come from? Does the child remain young forever? If not, where does it go when it becomes too old (or dies)? — but the fact that the only other response in this story is to walk away from Omelas just confirms that it’s pointless. In Omelas, nothing can alleviate this situation. You stay and benefit from the child suffering, or you leave. Neither of the reader’s hypothetical decisions here makes any tangible difference to the situation.
As you point out, our societies today are much worse than Omelas. Many more children suffer far worse than that single child in Omelas, and we enjoy far less social cohesion or benefits from this pain than the Omelas residents do. From this perspective, upgrading to a society like Omelas might even be a net positive; reducing all the world’s suffering down to a single (insignificant) being would massively improve the quality of life for almost everyone. Even the ones who walk away would’ve enjoyed a secure and happy childhood before they burn their bridges. I think this is where the Omelas-supporters are coming from; if walking away makes no difference, and does not help the child, leaving is futile and increases the amount of suffering in the world.
But the problem with these responses is that they indulge in the luxury of certainty, even as they frame it as a problem. Because Omelas is a story, we know that you can’t really have an Omelas without the basement-kid; it would stop being Omelas (either because the removal of the sacrificial child would doom the perfection of the rest of it, or because without a basement-kid Omelas isn’t recognisable from any other utopian city).
In reality, we don’t have certainty for any trolley problem or basement kid. Wanting to twist yourselves in knots about it is a nice problem to want to have; there are no real situations wherein we know the future outcome for sure and can spend endless time debating the correct options. Omelas exists in a capsule: if we put it into reality, it just breaks down.
I might say the story is more a question than an answer… good questions here
I’d like to make the counterpoint. You say a society with happiness exists and without the suffering of the child. Let’s just look at an isolated individual. Is happiness possible without sadness?
The answer is no since happiness is a rush of dopamine or serotonin but with more dopamine the baseline changes and we get to a neutral state which is not really happiness. Happiness is a change from baseline and so is sadness. They cannot exist without each other.
Now in the context of Omelas, I believe it is a story of antinatalism. To be alive is to be complicit in someone’s suffering (perhaps one’s own but most likely of others depending on how much privilege you got). Those who walk away may do many things but they explicitly reject this system of barter.
If you haven’t, check out NK Jemisin’s response “The Ones Who Stay and Fight.” It’s an interesting take that dives into some of the points you make.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-ones-who-stay-and-fight/
I think you can read a critique of utilitarianism into the story. Everyone who stays in Omelas believes it is a net positive to let one person be endlessly tortured in order that many may lead joyful lives. Those who walk away, don’t.
Utilitarianism reduces morality down to a simple balancing equation – if there’s more net joy in the world than net suffering, you have a just world. Those who disagree have the sense that suffering anywhere is a moral insult, and cannot be erased by joy. This seems to me to be in line with Buddhist thought, which calls its adherents not to increase joy in the world, but to specifically reduce suffering, both in themselves by reducing their attachment to desire, and in others by actively alleviating their suffering.
So it is really pitting two moral systems against each other – is morality about the greatest good for the greatest number? Or is it about rooting out suffering anywhere?
My thought has been that the title implies the emphasis of the story which is clearly on those who walk away, and I believe Le Guin is saying she rejects the idea that happiness must depend on suffering.
Your analysis is suspiciously similar to one posted by the YouTuber Big Joel on his “Little Joel” channel a few weeks ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5op696mKyY]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5op696mKyY)
I’ve always seen it as a bit of a critique of institutionalized exploitation via things like fossil fuel usage or maybe even animal agriculture albeit in a way that also critiques the titular ones who walk away a bit in my eyes (unless it’s implying they did this instead of just running away from a systemic problem like the people who say they’ll flee the country if [president they severely don’t like] gets elected) as no one ever stops to question okay why are we doing this this way and is there a freaking alternative
> And while this is certainly true for the city of Omelas, the story also hints very strongly at there being other, better cities where there is no pointless suffering.
Here I disagree a bit. I don’t think the story at all is saying that there exist other places where people prosper without the suffering of others. I actually feel like it’s sort of important that we, as the reader, can’t know for sure whether those who walk away find what they’re looking for or don’t — if their success or failure is certain it removes all of the moral quandary.
Just chiming in that “The Ones Who Stay And Fight” is a great companion piece to Omelas with also challenging themes.
> the story also hints very strongly at there being other, better cities
I completely disagree with this. Omelas is the best place you can imagine with one drawback, a single injustice. The ones who can’t come to terms with it and go looking for something better are headed somewhere which “cannot be described” and “may not exist at all.” Omelas might be the best we can do—she says this outright.
The trick to the story, in my opinion, is that it isn’t about Omelas. It’s about *the ones who walk away* from Omelas. Omelas is nearly perfect, and a better society is (as the author says) practically unimaginable. At the same time, we’re very good at deciding as a society that “we can’t do any better than this.” The ones who walk away from Omelas are the skeptics who, regardless of whether it’s true or not, insist on believing that we can do better, and sacrifice everything to try.
Crucially, you don’t have the option to pick the best possible city. The choice is this: You can settle for a very good city and try to be happy despite the injustice, or you can keep trying to fight injustice even past the point where it may be impossible. Neither of those are ideal, and I don’t think Le Guin is telling us which one we should pick. But the story celebrates the people who walk away, even if they’re ultimately doomed to never be satisfied. I think that’s a much more complicated and interesting message than “a perfect utopia is possible & we should try to make it happen no matter what,” which is kind of silly and superficial IMO.
OP you would probably enjoy this recent follow up by Isabel J Kim, Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole [https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/) it definitely hits on a lot of your points
it’s about capitalism. capitalists believe some of us must suffer so that others may have happiness. they don’t believe a society can provide for everyone if it wanted to.
This is a great reading 👍 I wish more threads were like this
I love NK Jemisin but I think she misses the mark a bit in ‘The Ones Who Stay and Fight’ as a response to Omelas
I see the story as a parable that explores the idea that the good is the enemy of the great.