Summary

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" starts off with the narrator trying to tell you about a parade happening in a perfect city. Almost the entirety of the short story is the narrator trying to convince you how perfect of a city this is. He spends a lot of time trying to get the reader to truly picture the perfect city. Also that everyone there is happy. And not happy with the connotation of simple, or simple minded, or whatever. No, they are just simply, truly, happy because they live in a perfect city. At one point the narrator is trying to list ways in which it might be easier for the reader to picture the perfect city, by describing things that might be in different peoples perfect cities. This quote just sort of cracks me up whenever I see it:

I don't know, just always sort of cracks me up how thrown in there it is lmao

The author does spend the last few paragraphs though letting you know one important thing, after you've accepted how perfect the city is. In a locked cellar under one of the houses, with no windows and only a single door going into it, lives a child. Somewhere between 6 and 10 years old. The child can not leave. The child is not clothed, and can not talk to or see anyone. The only interaction it has is when people come to refill its food and water buckets, or to be shown that the child exists. The child used to know the outside world, before one day being put in here.

The narrator says this is the price the people in Omelas pay to live in their perfect world. There must be a child in that room at all time, suffering. Should someone rescue the child, their perfect city would instantly crumble. And so, the child must suffer, for the good of the many. Most people eventually accept this reality, but others Walk Away.

Thoughts

I like this short story. I think it's an interesting read, and that its messaging is pretty obvious. I've never been great at reading deeply into text, so things that sort of just beat me over the head with it makes my job a lot easier lmao.

Obviously we live in a world with trade offs. Most of us in first world countries have things like computers, phones, cars, etc. It's a pretty commonly known fact that in order for these things to be affordable, workers in other countries are being exploited, in some cases including children. Hell even clothing it's often spoken about how sweatshops exist where workers are barely paid anything at all. And yet we accept this. "Well someone has to make these things and I need clothing, so I guess I just have to accept it".

This story I believe distills that thought process down to its sort of purest and most extreme version - what if an entire city of people could have everything they wanted, be the happiest they could be, but the only drawback was one child suffers immensely. The narrator in the story doesn't really make any judgements on this - just simply mentions this is how it is for the people of Omelas, though some do walk away. I think it's an interesting premise to setup, and I think a lot of people would have a lot of different answers to it.