"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin: Analysis

  “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is a short story about a fictional city where, at first glance, everything seems near perfect. Everyone is happy, but not in an ignorant way; in the appreciative way that only intelligent and wholly aware people may be. However, the total satisfaction that exists in this city is completely reliant on the grotesque torture of one of its citizens: a small child who is locked in the basement of one of the public buildings and basically treated like an animal, neglected and living in complete misery. One quote that I found especially interesting from this story is, “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. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else” (76).
There are certain parts of this quote that I completely agree with. Society does have a way of viewing those who are happy as either stupid or blissfully ignorant, as if everyone else can’t fathom the idea of actually being satisfied with their lives. The idea of only pain being intellectual is an interesting one, as if anyone with a degree of intelligence must be so openly aware of all the pain in the world that they carry it within themselves and suffer as a result. The ironic part about this statement is that the people of Omelas do the exact opposite, which is even more destructive, in my opinion. Others may look down upon the Omelas for being so happy, but in reality the people of the Omelas epitomize the idea of “blissfully ignorant”. The idea of choosing to be happy to live a better life is a great one, but doing so by ignoring the pain that exists literally under their feet makes the people of Omelas a group of lesser people as a whole. They do not “embrace violence,” but they still seem to lose hold of everything besides their own happiness. That is far from just being naïve, or blissfully ignorant- that is something only achieved by a society of monsters.
I find it so interesting how it seems, at first glance, that the ideas conceptualized in this quote are lived out by the people of Omelas quite well. They live above the “banality of evil,” and choose not “to embrace violence,” but doing these things does not lead them to live better lives than the rest of us. It would be different if they were happy just for the sake of being happy, but to choose to be naïve is not the same as actually being naïve. The people of Omelas do not live perfect lives, and acting as if they do does not take away from the fact that there is still just as much suffering in that town as there is happiness, because perfection is ruined the instant anything happens to spite it. The people of Omelas try to hide their problems, but that does not mean they don’t exist, as prominent as their blessings.