A Short Story Fable on Omelas

They all know that [the child] has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery (830).

Perhaps Le Guin is trying to fashion a fable as compelling as Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." Her success depends upon the reader's response not only to the story but to her style of telling that story. The deliberate post-modernist exposing of the wires and pulleys involved in the creation of a story distances both the author and the re

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evitably a balance of suffering and happiness, that the suffering of children will always be a part of that world, and that there is nothing we can do to end that horrible reality. This situation calls to mind the philosophy of Utilitarianism, which holds that what is moral or good is that which creates the most happiness for the most number of people. The people of the town apparently agree with such a philosophy, for they refuse "to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one" (830). The best any of the citizens of Omelas can do is to simply leave the town, to at least refuse to directly participate in the happy benefits derived from the suffering child. They cannot help the child (who Le Guin claims cannot be helped), or at least not without destroying the town, but they can leave and go to some other place where such a hellish trade-off does not prevail. Then, Le Guin suggests that such a place "does not exist," although the ones who leave "seem to know where they're going" (831). Perhaps their simple decision to stop their direct participation in the child's suffering gives them the aura of appearing to know where they are going. Are the ones who leave the ones who simply die and leave the wor
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Le Guin, Le Guin's, Jackson's Lottery, Walk Omelas, Mother Teresa, le guin, Nobel Prize, happy town, child's suffering, ones walk omelas, leave town, ones leave, le guin's, suffering innocents, walk omelas, telling story, ones walk, Ones Walk,
Approximate Word count = 1477
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)