![]() ![]() "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. "They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back," she writes. ![]() There are different paths we can walk, and we have the choice. Her story, like all good science fiction, creates a world that is like ours but not, and then forces us to confront how similar the two worlds are. Sometimes, some people, once they have seen the child, do not stay in the town that holds it prisoner. The people of Omelas are not forced to face their devil's bargain.īut here Le Guin winds up her story with the simple power of a master. In true Le Guin fashion, the story has no easy ending. The trip to Omelas, once a sunny city of fantasy, has slowly turned dark. But without a writer like Le Guin, we rarely have to confront them in such unblinking terms. We all could do more for the poor, we all know that there are mental bargains we make in this complex world. This is doubtless why it makes for such fiery debate in college classes. ![]() It is not hard to make the leap to a reader's own life, however privileged or deprived it feels. This is the deal they have made, and mostly, they choose not to think about it, to enjoy their own benefits and sweep their minds free of the suffering. They live so well because this child does not, and they will not trade their privilege to relieve this child's torture. It's a deal, she explains, that all the people of the city understand. "The door is always locked and nobody ever comes," Le Guin sketches out bleakly. It is not loved, it is barely fed, it is afraid of the dirty mops in its nasty room, it is occasionally kicked. "Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time," Le Guin writes.īut there is one catch: Omelas exists as it does because one child is locked up in a basement room, suffering. There is music, there is joy, everywhere there is happiness. In the story, the breathtaking seaside city of Omelas is celebrating its summer festival. So short it can be read in 15 minutes, the story is both so clear it can be understood by a 9-year-old and so deep and wrenching entire college papers are written on it. One of Le Guin's works taught in many schools is her 1973 story, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." (Omelas, reportedly, was a twist on Oregon's capital city of Salem, spelled backward and with an O added.) Le Guin, who was beautifully, brilliantly, sublimely crazy. "What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" - Ursula K. ![]()
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