UTOPIAN LITERATURE AND POLITICAL UNDERSTANDING:

THE LASTING RELEVANCE OF LE GUIN’S THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS

Adam Scott James

Central European University

HIST 5138 - Utopian and Political Literature

Zsolt Czigányik

April 2016
 James 2

Introduction

Ursula K. Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas1 was first published in 1973,

four years after the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair in Bethel, New York; the grand culmination

of the American counter-cultural movement. Like the naked, barefoot hippies of the great

American festival, who celebrated ‘the first Aquarian exposition,’ Le Guin’s utopians are, when

we first encounter them, celebrating the Festival of Summer in the city of Omelas. Similarly, Le

Guin’s short story carries a lasting, though different, political message: Woodstock’s being

predominantly anti-War and pro-peace; Omelas’ illustrating, through careful analysis, the

destructive effects industrialized countries have on the undeveloped world. Thus, there should

be no doubt that Omelas and Woodstock fall on the same end of the political spectrum.

Today, Omelas is frequently read in secondary schools and in introductory

undergraduate classes on literary criticism... and for good reason. Le Guin's short story remains

as politically relevant today as when it was first published (fifteen years before I was born),

while also remaining accessible to even the most casual reader. The Ones Who Walk Away from

Omelas is a perfect example of a post-modern political utopia, allowing for a popular, and

partly valid, ecofeminist interpretation, while, at the same time, illustrating the value utopian

literature has in deepening political understanding. Omelas both disturbs readers’ conception

of reality and forces readers to reconsider their own personal worldview.

1
Though it is commonly put it quotation marks, I have chosen to italicize the title of the short story, in order to
maximize readability and minimize confusion.
 James 3

Omelas: A Utopia with a Scapegoat

Omelas is, without dispute, a Western utopia. I say ‘without dispute,’ though certainly

some reader’s disagree. Everyone is free to defend his or her own interpretation. However, in

my opinion, Omelas’ utopian qualities are clear. To put it most simply, as David Brooks did in

The New York Times in 2015, it is “an idyllic, magical place.” 2 I would venture so far as to say

that this charmed place is almost undoubtedly located somewhere in the United States. The

grand city of Omelas, celebrating "The Festival of Summer," features "great parks and public

buildings," and both boys and girls frolic about "naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet

and ankles and long, lithe arms",3 conjuring images of the American hippies of the decade.

The city is full of music, and the people dance through the streets. Like the United

States, there is no king, nor are there slaves. Unlike the United States, however, the citizens of

Omelas “[get] on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the

bomb”,4 lending the city a more-utopian, less-capitalist character. The people are “mature,

intelligent, passionate adults”, not “simple folk, [nor] dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland

utopians”5, illustrating a developed society with some manor of an effective educational

system. Le Guin actually suggests that the reader should “[imagine Omelas] as [his or her] own

fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion,”6 allowing for a variety of interpretations, such

2
Brooks, David. "The Child in the Basement." The New York Times, January 13, 2015, New York ed., A27 sec.
January 12, 2015. Accessed March 26, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/opinion/david-brooks-the-
child-in-the-basement.html?_r=0.
3
Le Guin, Ursula K., and Michael Peich. The ones who walk away from Omelas. Creative Education, 1993: 1. Hereby
referred to, in footnotes, as “Omelas.”
4
Omelas: 1
5
Omelas: 1
6
Omelas: 1
 James 4

as my own: a sort-of fantastic, West Coast, isolated American city with obvious utopian

qualities.

Omelas, as was Woodstock, is a place of freedom. It’s citizens are free to partake in

orgies and drooz, a non-habit-forming, hallucinogenic drug which “first brings a great lightness

and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and

wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as

exciting the pleasure of sex beyond belief”7, which again conjures images of the LSD-rich, free-

loving American festivals of the decade. The people of Omelas feel no guilt, only “[a] boundless

and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in

communion with the finest and fairest souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the

world’s summer”.8 It is clear that the majority of Le Guin’s descriptions of the people of Omelas,

coupled with our permitted freedom to imagine them as we see fit, can easily mirror

descriptions of the Woodstock concertgoers of 1969, or, more broadly, the American hippies of

the 1960s and 1970s.

Omelas is, in my mind, undoubtedly a utopia. However, the fantastic city has one

serious precondition, upon which it owes its entire existence. Somewhere in Omelas exists a

dirty basement, home only to “a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads”, a

rusty bucket, and a naked child. One cannot discern whether the child is a boy or a girl, and “[it]

looks about six, but actually is nearly ten.” The child, who “is so thin [that] there are no calves

to its legs”, is “feeble-minded” – most likely a result of its perpetual “fear, malnutrition, and

neglect.” His or her “belly protrudes”, as “it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day.”

7
Omelas: 2
8
Omelas: 2
 James 5

The child’s “buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement

continually.”9 Le Guin’s descriptions of the child conjure images of third-world children,

suffering from poverty and malnutrition, while shocking and disturbing the reader.

The most disturbing aspect of Omelas, however, as well as the most important, is the

fact that “[they] all know it is there, all the people of Omelas.” Writes Le Guin:

Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They
all know that it has to be there. 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 their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies,
depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.10

Thus, the child in the basement is clearly a scapegoat. As noted by Bruce E. Brandt, Le Guin

herself “points out [that] the suffering child embodies the age-old idea of the scapegoat […], an

innocent who suffers for the sake of the community as a whole.” 11 It is made explicitly clear that

Omelas could not exist, at least as we know it, without the child’s continual suffering; a fact

known to every citizen of the utopia. Because of the child’s existence, Omelas, according to

Rebecca Adams, “appears to […] problematize the concept of utopia by foregrounding the

scapegoat which we, the readers, require to be the foundation stone of culture.” 12 We will look

deeper at the reasons why this is the case, in the following section.

All the inhabitants of Omelas are shown the suffering child “whenever they seem

capable of understanding”, usually between the ages of eight and twelve, and are “always
9
Omelas: 3
10
Omelas: 3. Italics are mine.
11
Brandt, Bruce E. "Two Additional Antecedents for Ursula Le Guin's “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”."
ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 16, no. 3 (2003): 54
12
Adams, Rebecca. 1991. “Narrative Voice and Unimaginability of the Utopian "Feminine" in Le Guin's the Left
Hand of Darkness and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"”. Utopian Studies 2 (1/2). Penn State University
Press: 35–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20719024. Quote located on page 36.
 James 6

shocked and sickened at the sight.” However, almost every individual eventually accepts the

situation, realizing that they simply cannot “throw away the happiness of thousands for the

chance of the happiness of one”. Almost all of the citizens of Omelas learn to rationalize the

existence of the suffering child, in order to move on with their lives and enjoy their privileged,

utopian existence. The few that cannot accept “the terrible justice of reality” leave Omelas, of

their own free will, never to return.13 We never learn anything about their fate.

Omelas and Ecofeminism

Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas illustrates the fact that utopian fiction

and politics go hand in hand. As noted by Maureen Whitebrook, who argues in “Politics and

Literature?” that students should turn to literature as a primary source of political

understanding, “[the] connection of politics and literature has a long history – from Plato to

Hegel, Marx, Arendt”.14 Therefore, Le Guin obviously doesn’t accomplish anything ‘new’ in

Omelas, though she carries the well-established connection into the post-modern literary

space, while promoting a post-modern, liberal political agenda. Whitebrook also notes that

“[some] of the best work in ‘politics and literature’ has taken literature as an essential source of

political understanding rather than as mere illustration or example.” 15 One such work is Barbara

Bennett’s “Through Ecofeminist Eyes: Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas””,

published in The English Journal in 2005, which remains one of the best secondary sources

concerning Le Guin’s short story and its political relevance.

13
Omelas: 3
14
Whitebrook, Maureen. “Politics and Literature?” Politics 15(1) (1995): 55-56
15
Whitebrook, 1995: 58
 James 7

In her article, Bennett discusses how Omelas can easily be read through an ecofeminist

lens. Ecofeminism is defined by Bennett as “a widely encompassing ideology, touching on

subjects as diverse as nature-based religion; animal rights; women’s rights; environmental

worries about water, land, and air pollution; wildlife conservation; and [most importantly in this

case,] the oppression of Third World countries and peoples by the United States and other

industrialized nations.”16 The last aspect Bennett mentions is clearly the most applicable in the

case of Omelas. The city of Omelas is certainly a part of some industrialized nation, if not its

own independent entity, and the suffering child may easily be interpreted as a representation

of the Third World’s deplorable conditions. But what, exactly, do ecofeminists believe?

First and foremost, according to Bennett, “ecofeminists believe in the

interconnectedness of all things: What happens in one part of the world, or in one life, will

eventually affect all others in the way that all threads reverberate from movement at any spot

in a web.”17 Therefore, ecofeminism is clearly on the left end of the political spectrum. It must

be noted that a similar type of global interconnectedness, as promoted by ecofeminism, is

becoming more and more established in the broad field of comparative history. The idea of

interconnectedness is especially crucial in such fields as ‘new global labor history,’ which

recognizes the fact that the labor situation in one location does not take place in a vacuum, but

effects labor situations around the world. Therefore, ecofeminism and new global labor history

are, in certain ways, related.

This global viewpoint is especially crucial in the case of Omelas, and Bennett provides an

applicable example to illustrate its relevance: the “[reliance] on cheap and disposable items

16
Bennett, 2005: 63. Brackets are mine.
17
Bennett, 2005: 63
 James 8

sold in American stores perpetuates oppression in Third World countries.” 18 This fact is virtually

common knowledge now, though it was almost certainly less well established in the early

1970s. Today, most adult Americans are aware that the vast majority of the clothing available in

shopping malls is made in sweatshops for a meager wage. Likewise, nowadays, everyone is

familiar with images of starving children. The suffering child in Omelas easily conjures images

of, as described by Bennett, “the child on television advertisements that seek donations from

overfed viewers who want to quell their guilt by writing checks once a month”. 19 And, as most

citizens in Omelas accept the situation of the starving child, most American citizens purchase

the sweatshop-manufactured products anyways, and often change the channel to avoid seeing

the unpleasant sight of starving children with bloated stomachs.

This is precisely why the most disturbing aspect of Le Guin’s story is the fact that “they

all know it is there,” and most move on with their lives. It is disturbing because we, like the

citizens of Omelas, all know the starving children are there, somewhere across the world, and

“we have [also] found a way to live with the knowledge that the child is there, a way to live in

spite of the knowledge.”20 We find ways to, as worded by Bennet, “rationalize the existence and

suffering of such a child and even forget it. We allow that sometimes the suffering of an

individual can be worth the price of the happiness of thousands.” 21 Some of us chalk it up to

cultural differences. Others learn to ”repress the image to get on with our normal lives.” 22 Most

of us have, even though it is tough to admit, “chosen to allow the child’s suffering solely

18
Bennett, 2005: 65
19
Bennett, 2005: 66
20
Bennett, 2005: 67. In this instance, the italics are not mine.
21
Bennett, 2005: 67
22
Bennett, 2005: 67
 James 9

because we like the benefits.”23 It is this awareness of our own acceptance of “the terrible

justice of reality” that makes The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas remain as powerful,

today, as when it was first published.

Omelas: More ‘Eco’ than ‘Feminist’

Where the ecofeminist interpretation falls flat, however, is in “[the] second major

concept behind ecofeminism”, which is, according to Bennett, “the proposition that a society

based on cooperation and balance rather than dominance and hierarchy is necessary for

continued survival on this planet.”24 This tenant itself is not problematic, as we can clearly see

how Omelas symbolizes the destructive effect of industrialized nations on the Third World.

However, there simply is too little textual evidence in Le Guin’s story to validate the prominent

feminist interpretations of the text, nor is there enough evidence to insert any critical analysis

pertaining to gender studies.

According to Rebecca Adams in “Narrative Voice and Unimaginability of the Utopian

“Feminine” in Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and “The Ones Who Walk Away From

Omelas”,” the narrative voice in Omelas is “”muted” in a way which has been theorized, by

anthropologists Edwin and Shirley Ardener, as distinctive of women’s experience”. 25 I will not

dispute the fact that women’s experience has been, and in many ways still is, muted. However,

the text contains virtually nothing to support this claim, nor does it support Adams’ claim that

Omelas “more self-consciously enacts a feminine position or strategy as a way to circumvent

23
Brandt, 2003: 55
24
Bennett, 2005: 64
25
Adams, 1991: 36. For further reference: Ardener, Edwin. “The Representation of Women in Academic Models.”
Visibility and Power: Essays on Women in Society and Development. Ed. Leela Dube, Eleanor Leacock and Shirley
Ardener. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1986. 3-14.
 James 10

the problems associated with traditional utopian attempts to offer an alternative cultural vision

from within the dominant (patriarchal) language and conceptions the writer must employ.” 26

Though Adams’ interpretation is appreciated and valid in its own right, there simply is no

evidence, in my opinion, provided by a close examination of Omelas, to support a distinctly

feminist interpretation. Rather, the text clearly prioritizes the ecologically and economically

interconnected nature of our global existence. This being the case, the ‘eco’ portion of

ecofeminism clearly takes precedent.

Conclusion

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas clearly has a political message. At the time of

the story’s publication, “Le Guin clearly [believed] that the general Western audience [was . . .]

blind and deaf”, hence why, “[to] make sure her message is heard, [she] tells a story in the form

of a fable that virtually everyone can understand, though perhaps on various levels.” 27 Le Guin

wanted her readers to compare themselves to the citizens of Omelas, and her short story

makes it very easy to do so. It is, in fact, very short; about four pages. The language is not

terribly dense, nor is it complex. It is reader friendly and easily digestible, yet remains shocking

enough to disturb our conception of reality.

Le Guin’s forces the reader to examine his or her own political worldview, while coming

to terms with his or her own acceptance of the global situation. According to Whitebrook,

“[literature] disturbs a dependence on reason and rationality; it expands the concept of

‘reality’; it enlarges the vocabulary of politics; politically relevant themes and issues can be

26
Adams, 1991: 36
27
Bennett, 2005: 65
 James 11

brought into politics”.28 Omelas disturbs our view of reality. It forces us to consider how our

way of life is owed to the suffering of less developed countries. We, like the citizens of Omelas,

have all seen the child in the basement. We all know it is there. And, like the individuals in the

story, most of us choose to remain.

28
Whitebrook, 1995: 60
 James 12

Bibliography

Adams, Rebecca. 1991. “Narrative Voice and Unimaginability of the Utopian "Feminine" in Le
Guin's the Left Hand of Darkness and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"”.
Utopian Studies 2 (1/2). Penn State University Press: 35–47.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20719024.

Bennett, Barbara. 2005. “Through Ecofeminist Eyes: Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from
Omelas"”. The English Journal 94 (6). National Council of Teachers of English: 63–68.
doi:10.2307/30046506.

Brandt, Bruce E. "Two Additional Antecedents for Ursula Le Guin's “The Ones Who Walk Away
from Omelas”." ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 16, no. 3
(2003): 51-56.

Brooks, David. "The Child in the Basement." The New York Times, January 13, 2015, New York
ed., A27 sec. January 12, 2015. Accessed March 26, 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/opinion/david-brooks-the-child-in-the-
basement.html?_r=0.

Le Guin, Ursula K., and Michael Peich. The ones who walk away from Omelas. Creative
Education, 1993.

Whitebrook, Maureen. “Politics and Literature?” Politics 15(1) (1995): 55-62.

 James 13

Further Reading

Collins, Jerre. "Leaving Omelas: Questions of faith and understanding." Studies In Short

Fiction 27, no. 4 (Fall90 1990): 525. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed
April 6, 2016).

Khanna, Lee Cullen. 1991. “Beyond Omelas: Utopia and Gender”. Utopian Studies 2 (1/2). Penn
State University Press: 48–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20719025.

Rayner, Moira. "Walking away from Omelas: What Price a Just Society." Newcastle Law
Review 8.2 (2004-2005): 16-31.

Roemer, Kenneth M. 1991. “The Talking Porcupine Liberates Utopia: Le Guin's "omelas" as
Pretext to the Dance”. Utopian Studies 2 (1/2). Penn State University Press: 6–18.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20719020.

Wyman, Sarah. "Reading Through Fictions in Ursula Le Guin's “The Ones Who Walk Away from
Omelas”." Anq 25, no. 4 (October 2012): 228-232. Academic Search Complete,
EBSCOhost (accessed April 6, 2016).