Why do we turn a blind eye to the injustice around us? Ursula Le Guin, an award-winning author in her story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas tells a harrowing tale about a city called Omelas, an idyllic place where children dance, people live in happiness, and the harvest is bountiful. The only thing is, one inhabitant of Omelas keeps this paradise together. They live in a little basement room under one of the quaint little houses. They are a little child, and they are trapped in this place, as they are starved, neglected, and tortured. The misery that this child – who has never seen the light of day – feels, is necessary for the rest of Omelas to exist. There can be no paradise without it. The people of Omelas know about this child, and while some choose to leave the town, and some actively hurt the child, most choose to stay, knowing about this atrocity. What this shows is that The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is a story that uses this symbolism, of the child in the basement to represent how people in the real world behave when they are exposed to injustice in their society.
The people that live in the city knowing about the child, represent how people can ignore injustice in their communities if it serves their own interests. In Omelas, a majority of the population go about their lives and enjoy their paradise, even knowing about the child. In the real world, the period where slavery was prevalent indicates a similar thought process: that the freedoms of the enslaved are of no consequence when compared with the comfort afforded by it. There is a passage that states, “they all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there.” (Le Guin 5) The entire community, the gaily dancing children, the citizens that enjoy the festivals and plentiful harvests are all complicit in the suffering of the child in the basement. They live their lives, enjoying themselves even with this knowledge. This shows a specific apathy, one that allows them to let this child suffer if they believe it to work to keep the city a paradise. This is a stark parallel to how injustices are accepted in the real world for the sake of personal comfort. Around the world, there are places where precious metals are mined. Cramped, unstable, and dangerous mineshafts. In the Congo, these places are built to extract and sell cobalt, which is used to process crude oil. The people that work in these mines are more often than not people from the local villages, some of whom are children, all of whom are taken advantage of. People in places that use the refined oil don’t often think of what it costs to get it, but use it regardless. This is just one example of the kind of outrage that occurs every day, and Omelas paints a vivid picture of it.
One more unsettling part of the story is where the Omelasians who abuse the child take advantage of the existing injustice to cause further harm. They see injustice in their community and desire to be a part of it. This represents how when given the opportunity, people in communities with broken components take advantage to cause further harm. This is detailed in the story: “Sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes.” (Le Guin 5) These Omelasians who come into the child’s room see this injustice with their own eyes, they see the pain that the child feels, and yet they perpetuate the practice. They are abusive, neglectful, and they hurt the child, because they have an excuse to inflict pain on a person. This is mirrored in the real world by ‘spineless sadists’, those that use the power granted to them by laws and common practices to cause harm.
The people that choose to leave Omelas, represent how when some people see injustice in their communities, they refuse to participate in it, and reject the institution. These people are described as such: “at times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman
much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home.” (Le Guin 6) These other Omelasians see injustice enmeshed with their community, and refuse to be a part of it. They reject the institution, and therefore their community which is founded on that institution. This is paralleled in the real world by conscientious objectors: people who refuse to take part in wars that their governments wage, often creating friction between themselves and their communities. Famously, during the Vietnam war, people all over the United States got together to decry the war. They refused to leave and fight, they refused to participate in the injustice that they saw happening right in front of their eyes.
Some might say that it might be better to work in the interest of the greater good and let the child suffer for the benefit of the rest of the population, and that the suffering of one child is inconsequential when compared to the enormous benefit to the population. The people of Omelas are happy and healthy, and to let just one child suffer for all this good is the kinder thing to do for the population. However, even if it is better for more people for one child to suffer, that does not erase the cruelty to the child, an innocent. How can anything good be based on a practice of such cruelty? Omelas, and the happiness it entails are all tainted by this one cruelty. Every child’s smile as they play, every excited conversation between friends, all of it is warped because of this part of the society that the Omelasians subscribe to.
Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas tells the story of a society that has a deeply embedded transgression, and the different reactions of its people to the child in the basement represents this as an analogue to how people are affected by societal wrongs that are deeply rooted in their communities. You would be hard pressed to find a country that hasn’t had some event in their history that its people deeply regret. We can’t pretend the parts that are wrong in our societies don’t exist, but we have the power to institute change, and try to make it right. Doing what’s right is rarely comfortable. In order to correct the flaws in the systems around us, we need to be prepared for discomfort so we can enact real, positive change.