Life in Omelas

Life in Omelas

Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” describes a Utopian village. The beautiful city of Omelas is described as though it were in a fairy tale. The city has no crime, enemies, and most importantly the citizens have no sense of guilt. Unfortunately the beauty of the city is built upon the torture and abuse of a small child whose suffering serves as a scapegoat for the sins of the city’s society. Some of the citizens of Omelas choose to leave the city because they do not wish to partake in the social contract that binds the city to its prosperity. Le Guin uses the themes of the scapegoat and the rite of passage to explore the values of Omelasians.

The first appearance of the scapegoat is the Festival of Summer, Le Guin does not directly state why the celebration is taking place, but the festival is of great significance to the city of Omelas. In medieval Europe Mid-Summer Fire Festivals occur to celebrate the sun, but also to expunge the evil. Sir James George Frazer, states that, “The annual expulsion of evil generally coincides with some well marked change of season, such as the beginning or end of winter, the beginning or end of the rainy season, etc” (Frazer 224-225). Frazer also explains that,” the three great features of the midsummer celebration were the bonfires, the procession with torches round the fields, and custom of a rolling wheel” (Frazer 161). There are no literal fires in Omelas but the images of ”houses with red roofs and painted walls between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved” (Le Guin 319), bring to mind distinct similarities. The mountains that surround the city ”burned with white-gold fire” (Le Guin 319), this suggests that the mountains are aflame, which is another component of Mid-Summer Festivals. The celebration in Konz, Germany on the Moselle River involves a wheel that is set on fire on the mountain and then is rolled to the river. People in neighboring towns, not unlike the travelers in Le Guin’s story, can see this event. The people of Konz also believed if their ceremonies did not occur, the town would be cursed; he writes ”On the other hand, they believed that, if they neglected to perform the ceremony, the cattle would be attacked by giddiness and convulsions and would dance in their stalls” (Frazer 164). Le Guin does not directly state the nature of the festival but it appears to be a traditional event that all the city’s citizens, save one, attend.

The city uses the child as a mechanism to vanquish their sins. The abuse of one person to absolve the sins of the whole group is quite common throughout history. The story of Jesus Christ parallels the fate of the child in this story. This child suffers for the benefit of the whole. The child, like Jesus’ suffering on the cross, suffers in the tool room. Le Guin suggests that when she states, “It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science” (Le Guin 322). Without the scapegoat, the city would lose its greatness. A citizen of the city must strictly observe the social contract for the city to prosper. For some, the commitment is too much to bear.

Le Guin also calls upon the “rite of passage” theme when the children of the city are exposed to the wretched child. ”This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child”