Omelas Literary Argument Essay

In Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” the narrator describes a beautiful utopian society. Nonetheless, the reader quickly learns that there is something much darker about the society and the reasons for its beauty. Throughout the description of the utopia, the reader is given hints of flaws within the society (drugs, drinking, etc.). All of the minor flaws that are foreshadowed to the reader in the beginning lead into the major flaw that is later found out -- the scapegoat. The scapegoat, or the person who all the minor flaws are blamed on, is the child who is locked underneath the city. However, the point of view the story is told from is what particularly leads the reader to the theme. If told from a different point

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”- Nelson Mandela. The quote is describing how freedom is not only being out of chains but to be able to be in society with respect from all. Freedom can also mean a lot of different things depending on the person. For example to a teenager freedom could mean them getting out from under their parents supervision or parental control. But, freedom to an adult that works everyday of the week, their freedom can be, not have to work on the weekends, which gives them their freedom to do anything they want to do. In the slave narrative Incidents of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs about her life as a slave, freedom means Linda (aka Harriet Jacobs) being free from slavery, being away from Dr. Flint, and to have her family free with her. She tries to achieve her freedom in many different ways. She confesses to Mrs. Flint about the advances Dr. Flint makes towards her, she falls in with a free black man, and gets pregnant by Mr. Sands. She uses these to achieve her freedom from Dr. Flint’s advances. She also achieves her freedom by running away to her grandmother’s attic, and running away to the North. Linda also achieves her freedom when Dr. Flint had died and when Mrs. Bruce being her savior.

In Western culture we are born with the right of autonomy. It is believed that this right can never be taken away from us. We are born into this privilege of liberty and are given opportunities to grow and make our own choices without being oppressed or discouraged for them. We are free, or so we think we are. In the book Slave My True Story by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis (2003), Mende a 12 year old girl, is stripped of her happiness, childhood and most of all, her freedom.

Douglass states that “Children from seven to ten years old, of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen at all seasons of the year.” (Douglass 8). Slavery is cruel, but the neglection of children is absolutely terrible and Douglass knows this. By using children as evidence, he gives his audience a moral conflict that only they could resolve. Douglass knows that parents know they’d never let their children run naked in any season, so he challenges these parents with the question: Why should this happen to our children, but not yours? Furthermore, he uses children much later on in the book to the simplicity of his argument. He recalls that “I used to talk this matter of slavery over with [the children]. I would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men. ‘You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?’ These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free.”(Douglass 34). Here, Douglass basically claims that the issue at hand is so simple that children can understand it. One the seed of slavery is planted within a slave, that person will forever be a slave. The children Douglass was with not only know this, but are saddened

Furthermore, the child's environment was one where a slave was seen as ignorant, savage and inferior to their white masters. Fredrick Douglass and Juan Francisco Manzano both lived under the "Black Hand" of slavery. Yet, each had a different experience while growing up that yielded contrasting desires and incentives in regard to freedom.

The Bible and “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” connect deep below the surface. Understanding the Bible will help readers understand Le Guin's short story. Ursula Le Guin’s story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” creates an allusion of finding the Christian faith through--the child in the darkness, the city guarded by beautiful gates, and those who leave and never return.

            You see, the citizens are aware of the child’s presence. They are aware, as well , that it is a necessity. They all know that it has to be there. Some understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, ...the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars...even the abundance of their harvest...depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery. Somehow, the oppression of the child makes possible the advancement of Omelas. The citizens need to keep the child down so that they can rise. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of [Omelas]. They all know that if the child were to be freed, Ò...in that day

“There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and his say” (James). This quote from William James uproots the concept of ethics in society entirely. James begins to explain that every man will have his own experience in life, which will end up leading to different opinions. These different ideas can be influenced by “the psychological question, the metaphysical question, and the casuistic question. The psychological question asks after the historical origin of our moral ideas and judgments” (James).

In The Wind’s Twelve Quarters: Short Stories, by Ursula Le Guin, the section titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” discusses a very interesting topic. There is a seemingly utopian city named Omelas. The place is full of wonderful smells, beautiful people, and no one has any troubles with each other. All the children are attended and cared for, and everyone is able to do whatever they want. Perfect right? Wrong. There is a deep secret room that is hiding under the city. “In the room a child is sitting...It is feeble minded. Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect.” Then, it goes on to say, “[...] the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice, sometimes speaks. ‘I will be good,’ it says. ‘Please let me out…’” This really makes a person think on what the other is trying to depict here.

Many people today face oppression, leaving them hurt and filled with misery. They’d often think, “Why? Why me?” In this text, Guin states, ‘"I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often.”’ Within this so-called “perfect” environment the people of Omelas live in, there’s a menacing aroma. The citizen’s joyous lifestyle’s feed from the suffering of one feeble-minded child hidden in a cellar, bruised and terrified. The child assumes that it’s done wrong, because if it didn’t,

Citizens of Omelas believe the child must suffer to allow everyone else great happiness. The choice Le Guin gives characters, are for a thousand to have elation for one child’s desolation. “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

The story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas takes place in a utopian society. A utopian society is a society in which most of its citizens are without suffering; allowing them to become a meaningful, artistic population. Everything in this society seems too perfect to be true. Throughout the story, the people in the Omelas are having a festival. The reason why they are happy and celebrating is because of a child being locked away from society. The society in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is similar to today's society in terms of how morals and happiness are shown through comparison and contrast.

Omelas is a city that is free of most of the troubles modern day cities face, such as pollution. This city is anything one could want it to be, as laid out by Le Guin. Omelas is an amazing place, where people can live freely and without worry, but they must live with the dark side of the city. Ethics plays a big role in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” because the citizens must be cruel to this child, who is locked away from everything, for Omelas to be a prosperous city.

In The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, some of the citizens, the ones who walk away from Omelas, risk their lives and happiness in order to achieve their goals of enjoyment in life. Despite living in a utopia (on the surface), the people who leave know that there is nothing they can do to save the boy, so their guilty conscience overcomes their happiness, causing them to leave. This departure from Omelas shows that big sacrifice is needed for one's goals to be reached. No one knows what happens to these people, but they risk their lives anyways in hopes of redeeming themselves for living happily while the boy suffers. In The Boat, there is again big sacrifice made by the characters in hopes to reach their desires, no matter what has to be lost. It was established that the father, one in a long line of fisherman before him, was always disappointed that he never go to pursue his education. He tries desperately to get his son to follow his dreams, worried about what will happen to him if he follows his fathers' footsteps. In the end, the father makes the ultimate sacrifice by presumably jumping to his death in order for his son to follow his dreams. Additionally, the father also fulfills his goal of getting off the boat, after so many years of torment. These stories show how if humans want something in life, sacrifice of what is normal and cherished must happen, in order for these ambitions and aspirations to be achieved. In life, you really do need to risk "it" to the get the biscuit, whatever the biscuit may

Once reaching the middle of the book, the author had made her thesis convincing by showing situations in which young slaves faced injustice, fear, and difficult situations of work in their everyday lives. Many of her arguments made her thesis stronger and stronger which made it persuading. But more specifically, the reasons why it was convincing is because one of her points states that when children were