The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

“The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.”

The Ones who Walk Away From Omelas is a short philosophical fiction depicting a very festive ideal utopian city (which is obviously called Omelas). Everything seems great and enviable about this perfect place except for the dark secret of the city – the whole city’s happiness relies on a single child’s eternal misery. When citizens come of age, they are told about it, however, they treat the information very matter-of-factly and absolutely do not mind to let a poor child suffer in exchange for their infinite happiness. Some disagree with this system, but are powerless over it and therefore have no choice but to leave the city forever, therefore becoming “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”.

This book is still very relevant in today’s context of scapegoatism although it was written almost 5 decades ago. Scapegoat is a term from the bible and it is understood as a person or a group of people who “absorb” the sins of others and bear their consequences and carry them away from the ones who had originally committed them. Scapegoatism has been entrenched in our world since the start of mankind. Some examples would be in WW2 when Hitler rallied the whole of Germany through scapegoating the Jews and with Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant and islamophobic sentiments, repeatedly scapegoating on the Mexican and their native-born descendants, claiming that it was because of them that all the problems in America existed, from safety and security issues to economic issues existed. Just as how the rest of the population in Omelas was aware of the child being sacrificed to take on and pay off all their sufferings for them, likewise Mr Trump has emphasised on this point, knowing very well that the Americans with low-paying jobs or even jobless Americans will definitely channel all their anger and violence at the immigrants and will not “cause him any problem” by turning onto him, questioning the government’s policies, etc, keeping him in office, comfortable and in his Omelas. (This scapegoatism eventually led to physical violence and hate speech from the white working class citizens in America towards the immigrants, sort of paralleling the fact that a child was to bear all the unhappiness and misery for the rest of the city’s joy.)

We are often put off and disgusted by the idea and evidence of ancient rituals of human sacrifice to “appease the gods” and bring back peace in the land. We hypocritically look upon them with disdain and classify them as cruel barbarians because we are so much more civilised, right? 

When reading this book, many of us heroically decide against allowing a child to suffer in such a manner and for such a cause. But we don’t realise that every day, we already do so, subconsciously or not — every racist “joke” we pass or laugh about, every snide remark about another religion or country. 

Much like sacrificing a person in ancient times and sacrificing a child to suffer for all eternity, xenophobia and hatred have no place in our world. We should all be more aware of our comments, our actions and out thoughts, so that we can, hopefully, move towards a brighter and more peaceful society for all communities and peoples. 

Elizabeth Leong 

4 Purity