Analysis of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: Essay Sample

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: Essay Introduction

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a short story by Ursula Le Guin. Like most of her texts, the story raises a number of issues related to the problem of obedience to authority and compliance with social conventions and shows how these can lead to pain and suffering. In this paper, we will discuss how blindly following authority or social convention can lead to rather terrible consequences.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas Essay: Social Conventions Theme

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas raises a number of questions regarding the basis of the welfare of the society and its relation to social conventions. It is stated that Ursula Le Guin tied this story to the issue provided by an American philosopher William James about whether it is ethical to ground the happiness of millions on a few lives of lonely torment (Wyman 228). Le Guin’s story depicts a happy, joyful society; the society’s constant joy is based on the suffering of an approximately ten-years-old child who is imprisoned in terrible conditions in a dark room (Le Guin 3).

Noteworthy, all the members of the community are aware of the kid, but before they are given the chance to see the child for the first time, they are told insistently that the child’s suffering is necessary for their society to be happy, and that the kid’s torment is a relatively small price to pay for it; and most of the citizens start to believe it, even though not outright after seeing the child, but when a certain amount of time passes (Le Guin 3-4). Therefore, it is possible to state that the child’s torment is, to a large extent, the result of the people’s obeying the authority that legitimizes the torment and adhering to the already existing social convention about the kid.

In fact, the situation described in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas has numerous analogs in real life. Even the contemporary society’s welfare (or perceived welfare) is based on the strenuous labor and hard life of those who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but who is responsible for producing the material wealth that is then claimed by the few who are rich, and, to a certain (but actually insignificant) extent – by the middle class.

These people are the scapegoats for the wealthy and those who are well-off, suffering for their welfare. And the social conventions, the ideology which tells people that this situation is normal are tremendous, sophisticated, and rather covert. It can sometimes be heard that their hard work is necessary for our society and that someone has to suffer in order for the majority to be happy, but it cannot be heard often. Mostly, we are told that in the 21^st century everyone has an opportunity to reach the top of the social hierarchy, but most people are too lazy to do it (and e.g. that the homeless are the laziest people ever); the reasons for this “laziness,” which include numerous social problems, the lack of resources to e.g. get proper education, even proper food, the general hopelessness and lack of perspective, etc., simply go unnoticed.

And it is somehow overlooked that in the society of the poor and rich, the majority will always be poor. So, people just believe the social convention that it is inevitable and thus okay that there are the homeless, the ones who slave away, etc., and simply do not notice those who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy, leaving them to cope (or to be unable to cope) with their “personal problems” alone.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas Essay: Obedience to Authority Theme

The citizens of Omelas also display obedience to the authority; this trait can also be the cause of disasters most severe. Most people of Omelas obey when they are told that the child is to suffer; they do not take any action against the authority that states it, they do not argue with it or defy it. It has been demonstrated that, at least in modern society, people have a very high rate of obedience to authority.

A very famous study on the topic was conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963. In his experiment, test subjects had to administer progressively stronger electric shocks to a person in order to “help” them “learn.” 65% of people administered the maximum shock to the person, believing that they are possibly killing the victim, only after being told a few times that they must continue; no one stopped at a shock that was below the last level before the shock became an “extreme intensity shock” (Milgram n. pag.). People, despite their hesitation and moral suffering, continued to (as they believed) torture an innocent person, simply because an authority, an austere individual in a lab coat, politely told them to that they must do so – and they could not find the willpower to defy what was not even an order.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas hints at a danger that may be hidden in this obedience by showing the suffering of the child, and Milgram’s study shows the disaster that lurks in the inability to defy. The research was inspired by World War II, when the Germans obediently followed Hitler and killed millions, to get a hint about whether others would do so in their place. And the study shows that, unfortunately, most people would also follow Hitler if they were in a similar situation.

Therefore, it is apparent that numerous wars, incredible suffering, and countless deaths throughout the course of humans were simply a result of the inability, and the lack of will and willingness, to defy the authorities. Clearly, these are a result of particular structural reasons, such as the social convention that is nurtured in us since our childhood when we are told that we must obey our parents because they are older (rather than because they are smarter) when we are taught that we must obey the law (paradoxically how this statement can go hand in hand with the disdain for lawmakers), and so on, until eventually, we start to believe that, and “behave well” rather than think critically about the consequences of our actions. Rarely do we consider the fact that some of the most terrible crimes against humanity were done by people who were, at least at the beginning of their path, simply “following orders.”

But yet, there are people who still can defy the authority when the latter gives its cruel orders. They are the ones who walk away from Omelas. The ones who can critically consider what is going on and disobey. Lonely and few, but they exist; and while they exist, there is hope that some potential Hitlers will be stopped.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: Essay Conclusion

To sum up, Le Guin’s story shows how blindly following the authority or social conventions can lead to suffering, and hints at what disasters this can cause. Ideologies are used in order to placate people’s indignation and replace it with ashamed disregard or holier-than-thou disapproval, in order to sustain the existing social order that gives privilege to the few by stripping it from the many. Also, people are told that obedience to authority is necessary; the result of this is countless evil committed by people who were “simply following orders.”

Works Cited

Le Guin, Ursula. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. n.d. Web.

Milgram, Stanley. “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67 (1963): 371-378. Web.

Wyman, Sarah. “Reading Through Fictions in Ursula Le Guin’s ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.’” A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 25.4 (2012): 228-232. EBSCOhost. Web.