“But to praise despair is to condemn light, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else” (Pg. 612). Ursula le Guin wrote The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas about the people of Omelas. This is a story about a city that appears to be beautiful and has citizens that are overwhelming with joy, while they are intentionally being oblivious to the fact that someone is sacrificing for their joy. Joy was a balance for them, and if they were to always be happy, there needed to be someone that was not, to take away all of the emotions and not feeling it for themselves. In this excerpt, Ursula Le Guin uses imagery and tone to illustrate the complexity and inauthentic happiness felt by the people of Omelas, and the underlying theme is sacrifice. Imagery is used to …show more content…
Le Guin is describing a child locked away being out casted and mistreated, while people intentionally ignored the fact it was occurring; “They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas…they all understand 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” (Pg. 614). Everyone knew that there was a child suffering, and crying for help, but no one would pay attention enough to help. Eventually the child gave up knowing that no matter what he did that this was his purpose in life, and he had no way to change that. None of the citizens were willing to risk their happiness, the security of their life, for a child they did not know and did not which to know suffering, so the child sacrificed everything for the sake of others. Sacrifice is to give up, and the child gave up his entire life and never felt joy for the sake of everyone else to feel