Explication of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
In “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, Ursula K. Le Guin describes a glorious and glittering city free from fetters and chains, pristinely perfect and decorated with streamers, engulfed in sweet smelling air and enraptured by magical music. This city seems too good to be true, and in just a few simple sentences Le Guin validates the readers’ unrest with profound paradoxical storytelling, enchanting imagery and shape of story, and a semi-closure that leaves the reader longing for justice.
Le Guin opens the story by describing a shiny utopia, where one must assume there is little to be desired from the city’s inhabitants. In fact, the reader is lead to believe that this city of Omelas is beautifully joyous and simple. Not long into the second paragraph of this story, however, the storyteller in Le Guin ruffles the readers’ happy forethought by spilling the inkwell of ambiguity across the paper. “They were not less complex than us …Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.” (1316). Why would Le Guin throw a wrench in the spokes of the readers’ blissful thought processing? The fact that the people of Omelas have been described as more complex than meets the eye in conjunction with the statement that only pain and evil weave a web of intellect assures that the reader will begin to wonder what pain is lurking around the corner, what evil sits below the surface of the picture that has been painted thus far. Eager to discover more, the reader continues down the page in anticipation. But instead of offering the reader a clear depiction of what other joy this fairy tale city could possibly hold, Le Guin stimulates the mental processes even more by offering up a blank canvas to the reader; “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” (1317).
This statement offers up a challenge of sorts to the reader. It is almost as if Le Guin dares the reader to out-imagine her. What would a fairy tale city be to you? One might argue that this approach is a lack of story teller, but this invitation to let the imagination run wild is only makes the story more vivid in the mind of the reader. Correspondingly, the freedom to take this story wherever one pleases leads the reader to know that the theme of the story is deeper than the shenanigans on the surface. Through this sentence Le Guin lets the reader know that she is approaching a more meaningful purpose and prepares the reader to receive this moral lesson. As the story continues Le Guin draws the reader firmly in by narrowing her perspective from a wide view of the city to a minute scope of one ill-fated child:
They all know that it has to be there. … 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 masters, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weather of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery. (1318)
The juxtaposition of the sweet and agreeable words of the cities niceties intensifies the bitterness and repulsiveness of the child’s inescapable lifestyle. This also serves to communicate a theme to the reader: good does not exist without evil, or rather: good cannot be known without the experience of evil. Also, the numerous descriptions of pleasant attributes of the city serve to highlight the isolation and singularity of this child. The splendor and glory of Omelas is tangible in the imagery of these words, and next to them the darkness that the child faces is like a festering elephant in the room. After this sentence the reader is no longer interested in the joy the city holds, but vies to find out what happens to this poor child. Therefore, Le Guin keeps the reader engaged and enchanted by feeding off of the curiosity and disgust that is broached. What of the child, then? What of the people of Omelas? What purpose is served by weaving this dichotomy so closely together? As the reader fervently tears across the final paragraphs a moral is unearthed:
Night falls. The traveler must pass down the village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone… they go on. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness … It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas. (1319)
Le Guin states that night falls to communicate the vernacular phrase “at the end of the day”. She also now refers to the citizens of Omelas as “travelers”. This panning out to a more broad word makes the moral relatable to anyone who reads the words, not just the characters in the story. It also indicates that a journey is underway. The sojourner must walk down the familiar streets and comforts into darkness, which is really indicative of the unknown. The yellow lit windows serve as temptation to stay stagnant and abandon the journey. Why are the travelers walking alone? Why not band together and caravan? This simple phrase places responsibility on an individual reader. Not only can the traveler not see where they are going but it is likely that they cannot imagine what lies ahead, and yet they move on, trusting that they know where to go. When all of this is put together what is Le Guin trying to teach the reader? At the end of the day, every individual person has a choice. Comfort and familiarity loom and paralyze when growth is around the corner, but each person must trust in their instinct to walk forward, even if that means doing it blindly.
The title of the short story is present in its last line. This sigh of finality is a cumulative exhalation of all the times the reader held a breath wanting to know what happens next, gasping at beautiful and horrid imagery, and praying that somebody will stand up and do the right thing. The striking end of this story is both beautiful and remarkably simple, as is the writing that Ursula Le Guin demonstrated throughout this story.
Vladimir Nabokov writes that a good writer must deliver a blend of three crucial facets in his or her work: magic, story and lesson. How eloquently Le Guin does just that. Her colloquial language and relationship with the reader keeps all who read fully engaged in the story. The characters she creates have our heartstrings playing a myriad of tunes from manic to melancholy. Her vivid and meticulous descriptions draw the reader in, and the flow and pattern of her story keep him enchanted. Finally, as the reader closes the book with quickened heartbeat, a lesson keeps him still and pondering. More is desired, but the selective choice of what she delivers to the reader assures that he will be coming back time and time again.