Le Guin Blog Topic #1

If you were a citizen of Omelas, would you stay or would you walk?  Please explain and justify your decision.

Would you walk away from the perfect life? Well when it comes to Omelas I believe I would. After responding to the poll with a Yes [I would walk away from Omelas] then changing my opinion to No after the class discussion, I now contently bring myself back to my original answer. 

I don’t see my choice of walking away as an attempt to ignore and avoid the problem at hand; I see it as rather creating a statement which shows that I do not agree with the town’s choice of continuously allowing their happiness to be solely based on the suffering of the child. Others would judge and say my choice is selfish but, stop and think, what difference can one person truly make? Walking Away From Omelas is a dilemma which would put much strain on one’s mind, especially if it were the mind of a child or an elderly person, because you would have to consider all the outcomes of your decision.

So let’s take a moment to discuss what the outcomes of some of the different choices would be:

A)    My decision (walking away): The boy continues to suffer and the citizens of Omelas remain happy. This is where the 2^nd blog topic comes into relation with the first. Though I would feel an uncontrollable amount of guilt, that guilt would soon make its way to the bottom of my thoughts because I would know there is not much I could have done to truly save the child from misery. Can one person end war?

B)    Staying: As Le Guinn described in her text “Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox” I too would be taken away from a Utopian state of mind at the site of the child. Because guilt is a feeling which is not felt in Omelas, I would always have that retched feeling inside which I would never be able to explain, all I would know is that it goes away but forever lingers in the back of my mind. My thoughts and beliefs would slowly begin to alter and eventually lead me to walk away from Omelas.

C)    Walking away and taking the child with me: While the child is free from Omelas, the rest of the citizens would then live in a withered and destroyed town where happiness would no longer exist. Then guilt would follow the child and I around like a hyena. Would the child and I be able to cope with the undying feeling of guilt, knowing that we just left behind an entire town full of misery? I don’t believe we would.

D)    Staying and releasing the child: Now everyone would be miserable, including the child and myself. Either decision you make the child will live an unhappy life. I would feel guilty for causing misery upon the entire population of Omelas and the child would feel guilty for being the reason for everyone’s unhappiness. Would he ever be accepted into a society which locked him up in the first place? There is a possibility that the people of Omelas would lock him up again in an attempt to regain the Utopia they once called home.

Now how come I would be able to deal with the guilt in choice A and not in the others? It is because the guilt I would feel in the other choices is considerably more than the guilt I would feel from walking away alone. In the situation of Omelas, every person is hopeless, for having the future of the town in their hands is a responsibility too momentous for one person. I would explain to myself that it is simply “okay.”  Causing misery for an entire town and for the child already miserable would cause the guilt one could never rid themself of. It is too unforgettable of an event.

It is up to the society as a whole to help one another bring about change and help relieve others of their miseries but in Omelas the people are not ready to make that change and that is why I would walk away from Omelas.