1. Ursula LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
HMXP 102
Dr. Fike

2. Video

3. Writing in Class: Allegory (5 min.)
It is possible to read “Omelas” as an allegory (each detail in the story corresponds represents a single point). In that spirit, what do the following details represent? Write down your ideas.
The sea
Omelas
The festival
Basement/closet
Child in the basement
Walking away from Omelas

4. T-Chart: Like Plato or Not?
Do you see “Omelas” as a version of Plato’s “Allegory”? In other words, is leaving the cave like leaving Omelas? How may this be the case?
Do you see similarities and differences between the two tales?

5. Psychological Themes Question: How does each one work in the story?
LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" may be a version of "The Allegory of the Cave," but it adds various psychological themes. Let’s talk about each one.
The unconscious
The shadow
The role of scapegoats (next slide)
Fertility ritual
Guilt
The transition from innocence to experience
Happiness
Individuation
Question: How does each one work in the story?

6. Scapegoats and Ritual
Scapegoat = a person who carries a community’s collective guilt.
Ritual = an activity that has been severed from its original meaning.
Is keeping a child in a hole an example of a scapegoat ritual? Has it continued even though it is divorced from its original meaning or purpose?

7. Vices
The story also has sex, drugs, and alcohol! The only thing missing is rock-and-roll!
Question: What is the role of these things in the story? For example, do they anesthetize the citizens of Omelas—keep them from doing inner work?

8. Walking Away What does walking away from Omelas represent?
Which is the better option--staying put or walking away from Omelas?
Is there a difference between LeGuin’s view and the narrator’s view?

9. Present-day Application
In what ways is our country like Omelas? For example, what corresponds to the child in the basement?

10. A Binary Universe
The idyllic situation in Omelas, says the narrator, depends on "the existence of the child" (par. 17). For example, how can we be rich if we do not make somebody poor? LeGuin's story gets at this difficulty. We live in a binary, predatorial universe.
Is the hidden child the Third World or the poor in our own country (or whatever we seek to hide, whatever would contradict our superficial respectability)? What do you think? Do we have scapegoats in the United States?

11. What about you? We have three categories:
Those who walk away from Omelas
Those who stay behind
The child in the basement ?
Question: Which of these categories best describes you? Is there a missing category? (At the ?, think Plato.)

12. Narrator
Do you get the impression that the narrator is just fantasizing? For example, look at the language in par. 5: “miracle,” “fairy tale,” verb tense (conditional: “would be”).
If so, what are the psychological implications? Is what the story says is happening in Omelas actually occurring only in the narrator’s mind and in our own? Is the story, therefore, a little parable about acknowledging the “shadow”?

13. Happiness, par. 5
“Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive.”
Necessary
Neutral
Destructive
Questions: What do you make of this statement? Can’t something be necessary AND destructive? Are these concepts the only ones that relate to happiness? Is Plato’s concept of the good in the background?

14. Another Interesting Statement
Par. 4 suggests, “Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.”
Question: Aren’t there intellectual things that are not painful? Aren’t there interesting things that are not evil? What does the statement tell you about the narrator’s values? Is the idea of “no pain, no gain” in the background?

15. Our Society Is it possible to be a good, happy intellectual?
Is it possible for us to be wiser AND happier, or does wisdom/knowledge bring sadness? (Ecclesiastes 1:18: “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow.”)
Cf. William Blake’s “Organized Innocence”:
Innocence: ignorance of evil and being happy despite life’s ills
Experience: awareness of evil and letting it get to you
Organized innocence: awareness of evil but not letting it get to you
The citizens of Omelas seem stuck in the first two stages, but perhaps those who walk away will achieve the third.

16. Final Question
What would happen if the “degraded and imbecile” child mentioned in par. 17 were welcomed into the community of Omelas? What would be gained or lost? Might we actually be better off? Can you think of real-life analogies? (Tell students about David F’s adopted daughter and her effect on the family.)
END