Reading Reflection On The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas By Leguin
Our deep-down happiness is an individual work, but some of the people believe that happiness depends on other’s actions and behavior. This belief is the reflection in the story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by LeGuin. The author describes Omelas was a perfect and peaceful society, containing an evil within. When I read further, the scene that I reacted to was the child gets locked in the cellar. The child experienced the aspect of physical and mental. I realized the Omelas people were selfish and they sacrificed the child for their wealth and happiness.
The area of the story in the middle scene when the author describes under the basement of Omelas, where the child got locked in the cellar there is no door or window. The condition of the child was frightened and physically hurt. The Omelas people knew the child's presence but no one come to help:“ there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child''. They chose to ignore the child for their joy, and prosperity. The child is symbolized for inhumanity and unfairness. As a reader, I felt upset and sympathy for the child for what he had to endure. I want to fight for the child freedom. I want the child to be free. There is no humanity of Omelas people, they were so cruel to live a happy life while the child is suffering. Their happiness came from the willingness to sacrifice the child for their benefit. They learned that “if the child could be released, it would not get too much food of its freedom”. The Omelas people valued their perfect lives instead of saving the poor child they chose to overcome it.
At first, my assumption of Omelas city was joyful because there is no crime, no slavery and there is no higher power such as a king, a government or law that forces them to behave in a certain way. Why didn’t anyone set the child free? When the author deeply describes Omela's dark secret, I understand our selfishness hurt the people around us. When I read to the point where the child was left out of the society of Omelas, he cried for help desperately but no one gives him a hand. “It is so thin there is no calves to its legs; it belly protrudes”. The Omelas people use “it” to describe the child’s status as an object rather than a human. They took away the child’s privilege to cover for their prosperity and beauty. I was amazed when the author illustrates a horse that has more freedom than the child does, “the horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit”. The horses treated as love and freedom. Even the horse has a chance to interact with the world and people but for the child serving as a scapegoat for Omelas people to be happy.
The story modified my perception because they still have sympathy and morality. The child’s existence and being mistreated that affect the Omelas people. “Sometimes also a man or a woman much older falls silent for a day or two, then leaves home”. No one asks for an explanation of why the child has to be sacrificed for their happiness. I’m glad that some of the people in Omelas acknowledge the miserable child and choose to leave Omelas. The people have seen the hopeless child and its wrongdoing they decided to leave their homes and leave the city of Omelas. “They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back”. My thought that some of the Omelas people still have a sense of humanity they give up their happiness to seek another place even if it “less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness”. They leave alone, each individually. They separate themselves from the place of inadequate as a utopia.
In essence, the story is a reflection of the child and Omelas people versus the world we live in today. There are many cases of injustice, but we chose to ignore them in order to be happy. However, the guilt or shame of what we should have done lies in the core of our mind, it changes the way we think. Telling us we could make it up by doing something good for our society. ’
Works Cited
- Le Guin, Ursula. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. New York: Harper. 1975.
