One thing that makes Omelas such a good story is that it supports a variety of interpretations. For me, it supported two (related) interpretations, neither of which was touched on here.
The first was religion. I was in the process of deconstructing my Christian beliefs when I read the story, and for me it pointed out the horror that the Christian story postulated. An all-knowing all-powerful god thought that eternal human suffering (hell) was a price worth paying for utopia (heaven) for a select few. Though it was even worse than the story; at least in Omelas, only one suffered so that everyone else could be free.
The second was the value of rejecting a horrible system rather than embracing it as good enough. What do you do if you find yourself living in Omelas? Simply living in it seems wrong, because it requires the suffering of an innocent child. But saving the child also seems wrong, because that forces everyone else to suffer. The solution of those who walk away is to recognize that the system is fundamentally flawed and reject it entirely. If everyone did so, the child could be freed without causing any harm, as there would be no one left in Omelas to benefit from the child’s anguish.
One thing that makes Omelas such a good story is that it supports a variety of interpretations. For me, it supported two (related) interpretations, neither of which was touched on here.
The first was religion. I was in the process of deconstructing my Christian beliefs when I read the story, and for me it pointed out the horror that the Christian story postulated. An all-knowing all-powerful god thought that eternal human suffering (hell) was a price worth paying for utopia (heaven) for a select few. Though it was even worse than the story; at least in Omelas, only one suffered so that everyone else could be free.
The second was the value of rejecting a horrible system rather than embracing it as good enough. What do you do if you find yourself living in Omelas? Simply living in it seems wrong, because it requires the suffering of an innocent child. But saving the child also seems wrong, because that forces everyone else to suffer. The solution of those who walk away is to recognize that the system is fundamentally flawed and reject it entirely. If everyone did so, the child could be freed without causing any harm, as there would be no one left in Omelas to benefit from the child’s anguish.