Previously in this series: The sequel to The Philadelphia Story no one asked for.
NARRATOR: Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. 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 that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
ME: Yeah…
NARRATOR: What?
ME: I don’t know.
NARRATOR: Do you get it, though?
ME: Oh, yeah, I do. I get it. That’s not the issue.
NARRATOR: About why they have to leave, the ones who walk away from Omelas, even though it’s the most beautiful perfect city in all the land? And how theirs might be, perhaps, the better choice?
ME: Right, right. I get it. I just think –
NARRATOR: Because it’s society.
ME: No, I mean, I get it.
NARRATOR: Do you, though?
ME: Yes. It’s clear. I am 100% picking up what you’re putting down. But, okay, leaving aside your weird antipathy for helicopters –
NARRATOR: There are no helicopters in the great city of Omelas! And yet they are not children. Is it not marvelous?
ME: I –
NARRATOR: The beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of the needy!
ME: Yes, yes, it’s all a rich tapestry. No helicopters, sex soufflés. Got it. There’s that whole bit that is just, I think, a description of a RenFayre, there’s only one drug available, and it’s impossible to get addicted to it, which I think is frankly cheating, and no one seems to have a job of any kind.
NARRATOR: The city of Omelas is a wonderful place! And yet there is a dark secret. The beauty of Omelas comes at a terrible cost. But…is the cost worth it? Only those who walk away from Omelas know the answer!
ME: RIGHT. I GET IT.
NARRATOR: But do you?
ME: I WOULD LIKE TO ASSURE YOU IN THE STRONGEST OF WORDS THAT I DO, AND ASK YOU PLEASE TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, AND STOP TRYING TO EXPLAIN IT TO ME.
NARRATOR: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.
ME: I’m not offended. I promise. I just…you have made your point, and do not need to keep making it.
NARRATOR: The city of Omelas has a terrible secret.
ME: Right. About that.
NARRATOR: “The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes – the child has no understanding of time or interval – sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice, sometimes speaks. “I will be good,” it says. “Please let me out. I will be good!” They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, “eh-haa, eh-haa,” and it speaks less and less often. They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. 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.”
ME: Jesus. Yes.
NARRATOR: If the child were to be freed, or even spoken to kindly, all the glory of Omelas would be lost! You find it hard to believe, perhaps, that the city of Omelas could truly depend upon the suffering of a single child? To which I would answer you: Look at your own soc –
ME: Society. Right. No, that part’s clear. And I’m totally willing to accept these terms, city has to have one horribly abused child in order to exist as it does, I get what you are trying to say about utilitarianism, please do not explain it to me again.
NARRATOR: Eventually, each citizen realizes that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy.
ME: That seems awfully convenient, and also morally reprehensible, to suggest that someone who has been abused would not enjoy the feeling of joy if they were to be treated kindly! I’m not against your making whatever point it is that you’re trying to make, but don’t try to solve this fucked-up moral calculus by suggesting this ten-year-old is too broken to be worth trying to help. If that were really the case, who would feel guilty about not helping him or her? If someone were truly incapable of experiencing happiness, how could anyone feel guilty for leaving them in the dark?
NARRATOR: Ah! Then you, perhaps, are like those who walk away from Omelas! They –
ME: Yeah. Is, uh, is that actually a functionally different choice?
NARRATOR: They walk away!
ME: Okay?
NARRATOR: Who knows where they go?
ME: Right. But they still don’t do anything. About the child. They just move.
NARRATOR: They seem to know where they are going!
ME: You mean to tell me that in a city of presumably thousands of people, there are only two reactions to this child? “Deal with it and become hypothetically more compassionate before the next flower-festival or whatever,” or “grimly leave town”? No one in this entire town has ever rejected the premise entirely and tried to take the kid with them? These people are angry and upset enough to reject the city itself, but they don’t decide to tear it down with them when they leave? “Fuck this, everyone can go back to subsistence farming and doing their level best”? That’s never happened?
NARRATOR: I – No. They just leave.
ME: That’s ridiculous.
NARRATOR: Wait! Don’t leave yet! The merry ten-year-old has another pan-flute solo before the next yearling race! Then we’re all going to take public transit to the Farming Collective Museum after the gentle orgy –
ME: Jesus, you’re insufferable.
[MALLORY walks away from the City of Omelas.]
THANK YOU. This story has always enraged me. Love this response.
Man, THANK YOU. That is all.
Most people are unaware that this story was originally a K/S slashfic based on that one episode of “Star Trek” with the planet where some people are black on one side and some people are black on the other.
I did not know that but I am now VERY INTERESTED.
Admittedly it lacks the lucid plotting of her printed work. Frank Gorshin’s character contrives to hijack the Enterprise back to his planet, only time-warping back to before the genocidal war of extinction, and kidnaps Spock to the planetary capital of Omelas (which in this early draft is named Nwotruoy). As it turns out, their planet’s year is extremely long, making Spock officially ten years old, so the citizens imprison and torture him as per their custom until he mentally regresses to infancy. Kirk rescues him and nurses him back to mental adulthood, which necessitates guiding him safely through the pon farr. Meanwhile, Lt. Uhura is left in command of the Enterprise, and tracks down a malignant influence on the planet aided by Dr. McCoy’s estranged psychic daughter, Greenbriar, with whom she forms an intimate empathic bond. They confront the alien parasite, named Msicar, who is feeding on the cruelty of the people, and Greenbriar sacrifices her life to stop him. However, when the citizens abandon their oppressive society and walk away, their spiritual energy traces out a planetwide dreamcatcher pattern which allows her to return from death. I may be leaving out a few salient details. In fairness, this was written during an extremely stressful period in LeGuin’s life. Fans will no doubt recall the interview panel at WorldCon 28 when, asked about the inspiration for her writing, she replied, “Straight gin,” and the incident later that evening when she set Harlan Ellison on fire.
My reaction exactly.
This is amazing. Please do this for every Toast article from now on.
Alas it is not to be, for Ursula K. Le Guin has already deployed her agents to kill me. Literary agents, but also secret agents. Literal poison pens.
too late they are already here, avenge me
their venom is swift and cold… i die, but continue to write… the three-lobed burning eye…
oh crap, they are not pleased about the pastiche of a different author, i am really in trouble now
Oh man, this is my favorite game! (Pretending that everything written after Star Trek was originally Star Trek fan fiction and back-forming its “original” form.)
I thought it was based on that one episode where the aliens torture the shit out of McCoy because they want to see if the alien empath will heal him at the cost of her own life which in turn will help them decide whether or not to save her entire race, which they’re basing on the decision of one person because it’s important that they be “worthy”, unlike the first group of aliens, who are apparently all judgmental assholes. (Why, yes, it’s a third-season episode, why do you ask?)
But
But it’s Ursula K
Even so.
NO I KNOW
what do you mean “but,” this is pure distilled triple-filtered cask-strength Ursula Le Guin, this is the best proof most people think they have that SF is good literature when it wants to be. speaking of horrible secrets we would rather not face for fear of what we would learn about ourselves.
I do not like Ursula K LeGuin’s books. At all.
Is that… is it an OK thing to think? Am I Problematic now?
I mean it’s a wrong thing to think, but not Problematic. You’re good.
(But wrong.)
Yes, agreed. Very, very wrong and misguided, but not Problematic.
I know, right? This isn’t even one of my favorite stories, but still having a lot of “Nothing Ursula LeGuin does should be questioned!!!!” feels right now.
I for one think the child’s parents are to blame. Also video games probably.
clearly participation trophies are also a part of the problem. and smart phones.
and vaccines, totally.
They were probably helicopter parents. I’ll show myself out now…
Kid’s a millennial, obvi. Very entitled.
If they’d only cared enough to put the child in a soccer league.
No; Sue’s to blame, she made the costumes.
Article title incorrect; propose changing to “The Sequel To “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” Everyone Wanted.”
But they didn’t ask for it, just like they didn’t take the kid with them, no matter how much they wanted to.
No, but see, it’s a commentary on society. Get it?
the only thing I took from this story and continue to take from it to this day is that “Omelas” is, as UKL says, backwards for and inspired by a road sign for Salem, Oregon. so the question this story raises is one that I have never heard answered or even addressed, which is: is Salem in fact like this? I am looking for a good solo vacation spot so please treat this as a real and not a rhetorical question.
Or, since it’s backwards, is Salem O. a backwards Children-of-the-Corn-style paradise where all the ten-year-olds run free and unburdened but in some sub-basement somewhere there is a single Adult who rocks back and forth and has forgotten even the words for mortgage and golf course and windsor knot and all the other simple comforts that are denied to it, that other Adults in kinder places take for granted? plus there are tons of helicopters in backwards Omelas cause kids love helicopters
I went to college in Salem and can definitively state that it is not like this, nor like backwards Omelas except maybe for the helicopters.
dang
I mean, good
Unless you’re counting college students as 10 year olds, which in fairness, you probably COULD.
Born and raised in Salem/Keizer, literal lifelong fan of Le Guin, and I have NEVER EVER HEARD THIS ORIGIN OF THE NAME “OMELAS”
I can’t even think of anything clever to say, my mind is just BLOWN right now
She has a story from the perspective of a tree along the highway to McMinnville in one of her short story collections. And The Lathe of Heaven takes place in many alternate-future Portlands.
It’s full of bureaucrats because it’s the state capital. And the cherry blossoms are very pretty. That’s about all I can say about Salem.
Mallory, you didn’t take the child with you.
…although, in fairness, you seem to know where you are going.
Well, she didn’t say SHE wanted to take the child and let the city burn, just that she didn’t believe that somebody else hadn’t already done that.
I’m picturing a pretty sweet movie adaptation with Liam Neeson heisting the child out of the city while all the ren faire buildings explode behind him in slow motion. YEAH!
Is The Giver supposed to be addressing (or derivative of) Le Guin in some way? Because utopian society, secret suffering, he takes the child, yada yada?
Hm, that’s an interesting question. They’re different kinds of utopias: Le Guin takes some considerable time arguing that the people in Omelas are genuinely happy in an authentic and grown-up way, with a vibrant culture and vivid experiences of life. In The Giver everyone is sort of…mildly content, and never has to make an important decision. The secret that the Giver holds is partly that the people in his culture aren’t really happy at all, and don’t even know what happiness is. Which could be seen as a rebuke to Le Guin’s idea of the happy city–Lowry could be seen as arguing that you can’t make a whole culture happy, you can only eliminate suffering, and if you do, joy goes away too.
Too, the people in Omelas know about the child; no one else in the Giver’s culture knows what he does.
So yeah, I have no idea what Lois Lowry thinks about Omelas, but it’s an interesting compare/contrast to think about!
There is a really good paper to be had in comparing those two “utopias.” Dang.
How convenient that the situation of Omelas should be some strange, sorry accident, its origins untouched-on, the blame divided perfectly evenly amongst the citizenry with nobody more or less to blame than anyone else.
How equally convenient it is that the roads out of Omelas are not preyed-upon by wild animals, or bandits, that those who walk away always get enough food to eat and a roof over their head, that the paths do not go through toxic waste dumps or lead straight over a cliff, and that simply by turning their back on Omelas those who walk away put themselves forever beyond the power of its enforcers to punish them.
You’ve put your finger on the thing that has always niggled at me about this story: It’s parable-shaped, but not convincingly, because it makes explicit a lot of unrealistic assumptions. Satisfying parables exist in a logically consistent world: We can recognize it as ours (“There was a man who had two sons, and he was a farmer, and so were they, and one of them went to a city”) or the story is sketched simply enough that you don’t start pulling at the loose edges. Omelas, with its pile of conditions, invites so many questions that it undermines its point.
And I love Le Guin, but yeah, “it’s society, MAAAAN” doesn’t work as well if someone starts wondering how the world in the story works aside from, “yes, yes, sacrificial victim, such Jackson, very lottery.”
Omelas is a much more direct metaphor than that.
We live in a world with a bunch of coincidental conditions that privilege certain people, though none today can really speak to its origins. Hence the metaphor.
Salem Oregon has battling ice cream truck owners http://www.opb.org/radio/programs/thinkoutloud/se…
So….one does not simply walk away from Omelas?
Get out.
With the child or…?
They forgot to mention, it’s surrounded by Balrogs.
I guess it never occurred to me that the story wanted us to see the ones who walk away as making the “right” choice, either. I read that as just another way of turning a blind eye to suffering–recognizing it as wrong, and not wanting to accept it, but disengaging rather than trying to change things. I imagine “walking away” as like moving to a part of the country with a better climate for reproductive rights, rather than sticking around and fighting for reproductive rights where you are, for example.
Coincidentally enough the final exam I’m writing to give my students tomorrow has a bonus essay based on this story, so this post make me even more eager to see what they write. (So, I guess if any of them read The Toast and recognize my name…. spoiler alert on your final exam contents!)
In all fairness, she did follow up on this issue in Tehanu and Always Coming Home.
Oh! That IS Tehanu, isn’t it? Do you know if she’s spoken about it since?
I don’t, unfortunately, but I’ll post anything I find here!
The only problem I see with a sex soufflé is that it would have a hard time staying up long enough
Sorry, now I’ll see myself out
Of Omelas?
Slowly collapsing like a flan in a cupboard.
I formally distance myself from this piece’s decision to criticize anything related to Ursula K. Le Guin. If I found out she wrote the screenplay for Hangover 3, I would assume it was actually brilliant and so subversive that I just couldn’t get it and would go live in a cave with nothing but a DVD player and said film for eighty years until I understood.
brb going to gin up some evidence
Breathing deep sighs of relief after reading this first sentence
Thank god we still have one right thinking editor left to us
This is how I feel about Le Guin as well. Occasionally I have had a criticism about her writing, and every time, I’ve later found out she had already come to that conclusion herself, years ago.
I’m Mallory Ortberg, I’m Queen of The Internet, so in the first day of my reign, I’m gonna come for Ursula K. Le Guin.
YOU DO NOT HAVE MY AXE.
I hate it when you two fight.
I LOVE it
It makes me legit feel all is not right with the world.
*whispers* are there any Baccano! novel fans here who would care to discuss how Omelas compares to SAMPLE or should I just keep shouting about it in my own head
(sorry)
I couldn’t finish Baccano because of the PINTS and GALLONS of blood spilled, while recognizing it as one of the best anime I’d ever seen…so, I am Here For It in spirit. 😛
I completely understand that; when Firo got his fingers sliced off in the first episode my friend had to beg and plead me to keep watching. The novels are just as violent but much less visual about the blood if you feel like picking them up when they come out in English next spring~ [end intolerable commercial]
…On the other hand, the novels have something directly comparable to Omelas, so, there is that.
But rescuing the child is the easy hero-decision. In fact, such simple, satisfying dramatic gestures are usually beyond our power, and it’s a cheap and dangerous delusion that they aren’t.
John Galt walks away from Omelas, then comes back and takes over the citywide poetry festival with an interminable speech?
Needs more trains.
Ender Wiggin nukes Omelas from orbit, then feels bad about it.
Then he goes on one of his classic Ender Benders.
Hermione Granger stampedes into Omelas, starts a one-woman protest, frees the child by force when nobody joins her, and teaches the locals a spell for renewable energy.
Bitch, plz. Galt would rub one out while watching the child be tortured and then use the poor kid’s tunic to wipe his hands.
In Ayn Rand’s Omelas, Dagny is the one being tortured, and Galt comes back for her, whatever happens to the city.
Christ, I wish that all the glory of empire could be kicked over by speaking kindly to a child.
“I feel guilty about being at the pinnacle of an empire that I didn’t make and have basically no control over as it rolls through history destroying the lives of others.”
“Well, you could walk away into the darkness.”
“That seems unsatisfactory. Wouldn’t the empire still be there, being evil?”
“Yes. Well, I guess you could just go find that child and be nice to it, then this whole thing would tumble down.”
“I…oh, wait, really? That’s it?”
“Basically.”
“I thought I was going to have to, like, organize or something? Try to create a template for social justice and build community organizations built on republican ideals with an ever-expanding notion of inclusion, arrayed against hundreds of years of complacency due to the comfort of capital interests. You think…you think I could just be nice to someone?”
“Yeah, but…then the glory…the glory of Omelas…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I’ll be right back though, hold on.”
Though, obviously I guess if this is a metaphor then it’s a choice between “a philosophy that says it’s okay to let a child suffer if it means happiness” and “a philosophy where who knows what happens but I’m not building it on the back of suffering children”, rather than an actual specific city.
Fine, fine, Le Guin, YOU WIN THIS ROUND.
NOOOO YOU FOOL DON’T BE NICE TO THE LITTLE BASTARD YOU’LL KILL US ALL
sorry friend, but I like my odds in the post-apocalyptic hellscape, and the naked souffle people just aren’t doing it for me anymore.
Been playing a lot of Fallout, so what I’m saying is…I’m good. Let’s do it.
WITNESS
Yeah, but it contains these glorious lines:
“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.”
Something in that reminds me fiercely of CS Lewis and his Silent Planet trilogy.
This is why I got a standing desk.
*calmly waits for Margaret Atwood to read this and email it to Ursula Le Guin, followed by an either beatific or wry (or both) response to appear on the UKL blog alongside a picture of her cat*
URSULA, believe me, these young men don’t speak for me
Thank you for your service!
i am not comparing the divine woman herself to Charles Lee, merely stealing the cadence, thank you
This blogger does not speak for mereeeeee,
She’s playing a dangerous game.
I pray LeGuin shows you her mercy.
For shame. For shaaaaaame!
Still waiting for Margaret Atwood to admit she writes science fiction and stop sneering at genre. Gonna wait a long time.
Even though the novel isn’t sci fi, there’s the very first paragraph of The Robber Bride and it’s what I want that to be read as the opening to my eulogy when I die.
Um, she wrote an entire book about her relationship with science fiction, so maybe you should calm down just a little bit? I will not have people slander my Atwood. http://www.amazon.com/In-Other-Worlds-Human-Imagi…
Yes, but she still claims, in the introduction to that same book, that she doesn’t write science fiction because she has this weird limited definition. I love Margaret Atwood! I especially love her science fiction, which I call science fiction, because I have the more traditional and less limited definition of that term!
The intro is up on io9, and her is an excerpt, which is right after she quotes Ursula saying she has a “arbitrarily restrictive definition” of science fiction:
(we used to be able to write longer comments, didn’t we?)
“What I mean by “science fiction” is those books that descend from H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, which treats of an invasion by tentacled, blood-sucking Martians shot to Earth in metal canisters-things that could not possibly happen-whereas, for me, “speculative fiction” means plots that descend from Jules Verne’s books about submarines and balloon travel and such-things that really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened when the authors wrote the books. I would place my own books in this second category: no Martians. Not because I don’t like Martians, I hasten to add: they just don’t fall within my skill set. Any seriously intended Martian by me would be a very clumsy Martian indeed.”
And here is the link: http://io9.com/5847421/if-it-is-realistic-or-plau…
Excellent point! 🙂 My issue with people snarking about it, though, is that they seem to believe she looks down on sci-fi. Whereas I’d say she definitely has a wonky definition of it, but she has a lot of respect for the genre, or else she would not have written a book about it.
I grew up there, and Salem is sort of like the closet of Omelas, all the children are miserable.
I kid, I kid, I like my hometown! I do have to bring this fact about Omelas up every time the story comes up though, so thanks for doing it for me.
Obviously this was supposed to be a reply to queenofbithynia, I did not grow up in Omelas, repeat, I did not grow up in Omelas.
Just the town that inspired the name of Omelas.
OMG do not feed Margaret Atwood.
The people can’t all be happy. There are the parents who had to ggive up their 3 yo for torture, and all the parents of children under 5, knowing their child could be chosen when this one dies.
COOL STORY, BRO: one of my friends used to be in a monthly book club with Le Guin. I was so jealous when I found out.
I’ve met her here in Portland. She’s lovely.
I actually always had a totally different reading of this story:
NARRATOR: What if I told you there was this amazing city where everything is perfect and nice?
IMAGINED READER: Well, like, surely it can’t be good all the time, it’d be boring, and puritanical, obviously. Or at least, people would find some way to be nasty to each other. You know. Something would go wrong.
NARRATOR: No, no, no, I’m serious about this, let me try to describe the best possible society I can. Believe in this for a second.
IMAGINED READER: No way, a utopia would suck. No way people are actually happy.
NARRATOR: Okay, there’s ONE SUFFERING KID, okay? And it’s completely meaningless and pointless and that kid is utterly deprived of all the wonderful things happening above. And I guess everything nice depends on that, for no established causal relationship. It’s grotesque and awful. Can you believe in this world now?
IMAGINED READER: Oh yeah that’s fine then, good spec fic, carry on. Phew, sorry, I thought you were being boundlessly optimistic for a moment, and were claiming that suffering was not inherently part of the human condition from which we can never escape!
[STORY BECOMES FAMOUS]
NARRATOR (QUIETLY): But there are still some people who hope for better than even that, even though you can’t.
This was one of the first messages I pulled out of this story when I read it last year for a sci-fi class. She spends about the first half of the book talking about how not ~edgy~ it is to have Suffering in a fictional world. Then she basically side-eyes the reader for feeling that this world is more believable with the addition of a Dark ~Edgy~ Secret. Like, I saw the story as more of a critique of adding in darkness and sadness to a story and pretending like it makes it more realistic (I’m looking at you, literally every grimdark gritty reboot movie).
Though with these kind of stories, I don’t think there’s only ever one important message. Its more like a “the first three words you see in this word search are what you want in life” kinda deals except a bit less random and a little more indicative of a person’s values.
To the sea?
How is it that this has never been said before?
Because it has needed to be said for a LONG time now.