The Ones Who Don't Walk Away from Omelas

In her short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," American writer Ursula K. Le Guin didn't imagine a rebellion in Omelas. The characters in the story found the greatest strength within themselves to leave behind the 'city of happiness Omelas,' where their happiness was built upon the misery of a child beneath their feet, confined in the basement of one of the beautiful public buildings or perhaps in the cellar of one of the spacious homes. Every day, the child, weak and emaciated, survives on half a bowl of corn and gruel, pushed around and neglected, its legs like sticks, its stomach stuck to its bones. The people of Omelas know about the child, they know what happens to it, yet they continue with their lives. Their happiness depends on the state in which the child "is." As Guin astutely observes, "If I know anything, it's that there is no guilt in Omelas." As Guin emphasizes, "The conditions are harsh and clear-cut; not even a kind word can be spoken to the child."

The tiny child deprived of humanity does not bring about a moral change in the lives of the people of Omelas. Occasionally, some of Omelas' teenage girls and boys, sometimes an older man or woman, each on their own, leave the city streets in the darkness of night, heading westward or northward, towards the mountains, disappearing from sight. All they can do is leave. The last lines of the story are as follows: "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 it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

Ursula K. Le Guin, born in 1929, lived long enough to be a keen observer of American society and its establishment. Ursula K. Le Guin, who passed away in 2018, was aware of what the "American world" she lived in was. The oppressive feeling of living in an environment where the imaginary world of Omelas embodied "American" might have been the reason for her turn to science fiction literature. Perhaps Guin sought refuge in the safer arms of science fiction to depict the truths of the "Omelas order" embodied as "American." After all, isn't literature with semi-realistic and semi-fantastic themes an escape, a departure? Like the ones who leave Omelas, Guin seems to know where she's going.

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" can be read as a critique or rejection of contemporary American society. This judgmental statement is reinforced by the presence of babies, children, women, and the elderly whose bodies are torn apart by American bombs in Gaza, and Palestinians whose homes are demolished over their heads. "Omelas" may be an imaginary city, but what happens in Omelas is real in America.

Students at American universities have risen up against Israel's "Palestinian genocide." Israel's American guards report that what students see in Gaza is not "as they see it." The guards say that those who do not obey the "silence rule" of the Omelas Treaty will have their lives poisoned. Young people who dare to say "what is happening" in Gaza are considered guilty for this reason. Gaza is the basement of the child deprived of humanity in Omelas. The guards of Omelas have ruled that what happens in Gaza cannot even be called "genocide," let alone the massacres repeated every day, every night, being called "massacres."

Yet America's brave boys and girls are not like those who leave Omelas. They are not going anywhere. They are aware that the liberation of both themselves and the people of Omelas depends on the liberation of the child in the basement. The rebellion of these young people, who are aware of the indignity of living within a system touched by wretched obedience, is an expression of this awareness.