The ones who walk away from omelas analysis

#The ones who walk away from omelas analysis full#

In this way, we can read the story as a political allegory that urges readers to examine their own complicity within systems of privilege.The short story вЂњThe Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,вЂќ emphasizes the thought that happiness always comes with a price to pay. Likewise, some people argue that those who are underprivileged are in these positions because they do not work hard enough or because they made bad choices that curtailed their opportunities this kind of language is used to justify the continued suffering of people who have been systemically disadvantaged and oppressed by society. They say the child is an imbecile-that it wouldnвЂ™t even understand what it had been given if it were freed and brought out into the light. The citizens of Omelas find ways to justify the status quo and maintain it. This analogyВ can be extended to consumers as well-we may benefit from cheap prices on food and clothes, but companies often keep prices low by outsourcing production to countries where wages are extremely low and workers labor in poor, often unsafe, conditions. The wage gap between those with the highest salaries and those with the lowest salaries in large companies can be astounding, and the people who are earning the lowest salaries are often not even making a living wage. For example, the owners of a large, successful company could choose to pay their employees a higher wage and take smaller salaries for themselves, but often they do not. This is very similar to how the citizens of Omelas can live with the knowledge of the miserable child. There are abundant examples in real life of people who enjoy their positions of privilege without acknowledging or caring about the underprivileged. If the underprivileged were liberated from the abuse they suffer, then the privileged would not be able to keep their status. Without the labor and pain of these individuals, those with privilege could not maintain their position in society. The happiness and lovely success of the privileged is dependent upon the suffering of those without privilege. The child in the closet, then, is representative of those without privilege in society-those people whose lives consist of sweat, labor, stress, and worry they never have enough to eat. They do not worry about where their next meal will come from, and they have the ability to be carefree.

#The ones who walk away from omelas analysis full#

They enjoy a life free from stress and worry a life full of time to do what they want, whenever they want a life of celebrations. Those citizens who celebrate the Festival of Summer-those who enjoy the peace, the contentment, and the utopian happiness of Omelas-can be considered the privileged of society. The story can be read quite persuasively as a political allegory. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.вЂќ The story ends with вЂњThe place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. However, a few citizens, young and old, silently walk away from the city, and no one knows where they go. Once citizens are old enough to know the truth, most, though initially shocked and disgusted, ultimately acquiesce to this one injustice that secures the happiness of the rest of the city. The cityвЂ™s constant state of serenity and splendor requires that a single unfortunate child be kept in perpetual filth, darkness, and misery. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all.вЂќ Everything about Omelas is so abundantly pleasing that the narrator decides the reader is not yet truly convinced of its existence and so elaborates upon the final element of the city: its one atrocity. The uncertain narratorВ reflects that вЂњOmelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. The specific socio-politico-economic setup of the community is not mentioned the narrator merely claims not to be sure of every particular. Omelas has no kings, soldiers, priests, or slaves. The vibrant festival atmosphere, however, seems to be an everyday characteristic of the blissful community, whose citizens, though limited in their advanced technology to communal (rather than private) resources, are still intelligent, sophisticated, and cultured. In Omelas, the summer solstice is celebrated with a glorious festival and a race featuring young people on horseback. The only chronological element of the work is that it begins by describing the first day of summer in Omelas, a shimmering city of unbelievable happinessВ and delight.