The Ones Who Couldn't Stay

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” –Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, p. 76

In Ursula K Le Guin’s short story, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, readers are introduced to a frighteningly idealistic community called Omelas. At first, Omelas seems like the perfect place to live in. Le Guin maps out cheerful citizens, bountiful music as part of a magical festival and all that genuine happiness looks like throughout a perfect setting. For quite some time, readers are persuaded to see the beauty of that city—that is, until the condition is revealed. Locked away in a grotesque prison is a malnourished and severely neglected child. In order for the utopian society to persist, the child must live in impossible conditions. The child sleeps on his/her own feces, is fed only corn meal and grease hastily, and lives in a basement replete with absolute darkness. The citizens of Omelas know this, and some often visit him. Yet, you’ll find those who are exposed to that reality do one of two things: continue inhabiting the city with little contact of the young child or become among the small group of the ones who walk away from Omelas.

The quote provided sheds light as to why the ultimate sacrifice for this city would be the imprisonment of a child. Consider a child. Children are naive and pain is merely a concept understood as a result of aging. A child doesn't believe happiness is stupid, in fact, a child’s main goal is to be happy as much as possible. Children don’t understand “growing pains” at first. Only adults have concluded that wisdom is a product of pain endured and lessons learned. A child’s happiness possesses innocence. It is neither complex nor complicated. Even if a child believes he/she needs something specific to be happy, after some time, a true child is content with enjoying anything that is even slightly interesting. We have a bad habit of acknowledging pain more than happiness. Yes, we understand happiness more after the presence of pain, but there is nothing like naive, unstoppable happiness. The constant urge and drive to find happiness without the complexity of understanding consequences.

Now the story’s introduction poses a significant question: would you pay this price to live in a Utopian society? Would you sacrifice a child’s development and overall life for the happiness of your own? I can’t say that I would. I believe that this life was established from the very beginning. We as human beings cannot produce perfection nor can we imitate and attempt to build it. Underneath all of the happiness filled throughout Omelas, there was still an underlying sadness for its citizens who knew what was being sacrificed. Underlying sadness contends with complete happiness.  Since you find, even in this story, that absolute happiness is unattainable, that means perfection is just as impossible to possess or create. A Utopian society is impossible to create for many reasons, but of them all one stands out—There is always someone somewhere who is unhappy with the way things are.