Imperfect Utopia Of The Story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
Have you thought of happiness exists with misery and grief? Or is happiness described by the difference between misery and grief? Our happiness consumes off two unique sources that consist of positive, ironically and negative energy. Positive energy develop from the satisfaction we gain physically and spiritually and negative derives from your thought of the satisfaction being gone and no where near. Ursula Leguin’s story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, refuse to defeat the ironic energy and utilitarianism because the story has relevance to real world situation, and has the effect of demonstrating moral weaknesses like living in misery within our own society.
In the story “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas” by U. Le Guin it shows a society living in a pursuit of happiness and prosperity at the expense of a one child’s in anguish. The author paint a picture of a utilitarian utopia, a world in which the well-being of the vast majority can be guaranteed through the suffering of a very few. In every society such injustice really exist such as the poor working hard for the benefit of the rich, however the author here introduce the cruelty by applying it to a poor innocent child. The author here is a strong supporter of pragmatism, she believes in necessity of the minority sacrifice for the good and wealth of the majority which leads to my next point.
Most of the people during some point in their life often base their own happiness on other’s suffering.As you can see, vary upon the individual. According to the story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, the town’s happiness “depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (216).In other words some people happiness really can affect or depend on others people. For example is those “people in Africa would die for that” phrase or comment from people , it creates an analogy of the life differences that an average American citizen has compared to a poor African citizen. It makes the American feel better about him/herself such as being in a troubling situation, they have already the thinking of someone else has it worse. Which is stated that American are superior that African people. I believe that those people who are capable to do anything to satisfy others are the ones that don’t think for themselves first.
In reality exploitation has overcome the compassion and respect humans should have toward sacrifices and hard work people perform to please others . According to the story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, “They know that if the wretched one were not there snivelling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer”(Le Guin 209). In other words its explains that in both America and Omelas, the poor and underprivileged are often exploited and overlooked by the rich. Third world countries are seen with unlivable conditions compared to contemporary American citizens , as an example like cuba, Venezuela and etc. Those countries are struggling economically and are facing enormous lack of resources and others powerful countries have used those countries for their resources such as gasolines that comes from Venezuela. However no one does anything to help them. As those powerful country are in joy their government walks away just like the story.The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The government system of Americans is seen in Omelas where the happiness of the majority are laying down on the misery of a powerless minority. Something or someone need to be victimized in order for Omelas and America to live in happiness.
Omelas seems better than the world we currently live in. People in other countries undergo an immense amount of hard working also harming themselves so that we can have resources t a lower price like clothing ,oil, T-shirts and other luxuries of society. The cumulative suffering brought about by this exploitation appears much greater in real life than the misery of the one child in Omelas. Furthermore, we are substantially less happy than the people of Omelas. The author want us to condemn the Omelas society as morally wrong therefore to admit that we ourselves are moral deviants of a much worse degree.
As a conclusion we can agree to this story by U. Le Guin that is an allegory, in which the author criticizes the present society and uses the story to symbolize human actions. Due to the constant propaganda of pain and misery, claims the author, we can no longer describe a happy man., but it doesn’t mean that she agree the way the citizen of Omelas treat the poor child. As human beings we need to stop thinking for ourselves , happiness its not only about what you feel inside it also include your surrounding which complete your happiness and have compassion toward others people because there’s no perfect life or happiness.
