Aren’t you ignoring the end of the story (and the part the title references) though? It seems like the whole thing is buildup to the people who walk away from Omelas, who are implied to do so because this situation is terrible, despite the utilitarian calculus.
Seems to me like the intended meaning of that title was different when Le Guin started writing, and then things went in a different direction along the way, and Le Guin just accepted where it ended up.
My guess is it was initially intended to refer to those who wont accept the possibility of utopia, those who cynically turn away before it’s built, or those idealists who will swarm and rupture any near-perfect thing by picking and tearing at its smallest flaws, and as Tobias points out, much of it seems to have been written that way.
Then I think it might’ve gotten lost partway through, in the way a dream does, a contrivance is introduced to make a broader point, the contrivance grabs the attention of the dreamer to such an extent that the broader point gets forgotten, and “the ones who walk away from omelas” ended up walking away entirely in response to the contrivance.
So Le Guin faced a choice, she could have noticed that and trashed it and started over until she had something perfectly intentional, but successful authors generally don’t do that ime. They publish in large quantity and they publish entertaining rides rather than coherent parables. If the contrivance was engaging enough to obscure the broader point, then a successful author lets the work become about the contrivance.
When I was reading it I had the impression that the reactions of the people of Omelas to the child were meant to reference the readers’ own rationalizations of suffering, in real life as well as fiction, especially in this paragraph:
But as time goes on they begin to realize 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. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there snivelling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.
The child wouldn’t even like being released anyway; it’s a fundamental part of reality; if the child didn’t exist we couldn’t really be happy. That sounds like a big pile of rationalizations to me! The people of Omelas start by knowing the child’s suffering is wrong, aren’t able to do something about it, and then slowly come up with rationalizations until they can accept it.
So the ones who walk away are the ones that refuse to rationalize. This could imply that they are nothing but the ones that refuse to rationalize, that the “walking away” represents rejecting the city of Omelas as happy and resolving to build a better version of it. Or maybe I’m just imagining and this is not even close to the intended meaning.
Thanks for pointing out that this is a big omission! I’ve added a bit about it.
I don’t think ‘you’re not able to accept a pure utopia’ is the only theme of the story, but it is a large and (to me) dominant one.
If I read the ending in isolation, it does feel like a critique of utilitarianism. But since the story introduces the suffering child, the ‘utilitarian downside’ of the calculus, as a clear farce, I find it not a plausible reading overall.
Taking the ending seriously is as bit as if you took the following argument against utilitarianism seriously: “Imagine there’s a child drowning in a shallow pond. You’re wearing a swimsuit and could easily save them. Don’t believe me? Okay, let me make it more believable: imagine there’s also a cute puppy guarding the pond that you’d have to kill to reach the child. Would you do it?”
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.
She mentions that they know where they are going, but she doesn’t mention why they are going. It could be because they’d personally be unhappy in such a place. It could be because they think there’s an even better possible place. It could be because they reject the utilitarian calculus. I’m genuinely confused what the end is about.
idk if you saw my second comment, but I think this explains it
Those who walk away are those who are even able to live in a non-Omelas, those who are able to imagine even the possibility of not having a hidden evil at the heart of a perfect world. The reader who does not walk away from Omelas, lives in Omelas and has lived in Omelas for their whole life, in the sense of mentally inhibiting the world in which any Omelas must have the tortured child. Those who walk away are therefore the very few who are able to reject that mental world, leave it, and achieve all the good rather than just the good that comes at a tragic cost.
This makes sense, especially given when Le Guin says “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.”. If she did describe it, the reader (who has not yet themselves left Omelas) would assume that place also has some horrible secret, and so her attempt would fail.
“Imagine there’s a child drowning in a shallow pond. You’re wearing a swimsuit and could easily save them. Don’t believe me? Okay, let me make it more believable: imagine there’s also a cute puppy guarding the pond that you’d have to kill to reach the child. Would you do it?”
This seems very incoherent.
It starts with “Imagine” and then two sentences later asks “Don’t believe me?”
Believe what? Believe that I was asked to imagine something? I look back up a bit on the page, and I can have rather high credence that I was asked to imagine something.
Believe that I have imagined the scenario? I can have pretty high credence of imagining something that matches the description so that doesn’t fit either.
Believe that the imaginary scenario is real? Agreed, I definitely don’t believe that and there’s a lot of evidence that it’s false, but what relevance does it have? The text didn’t ask me to believe that.
Maybe believe that I could one day be in such a situation? Well, that’s definitely more believable but still very unlikely. I’m very much not in a habit of wearing swimsuits near ponds, though if it had been a swimming pool that would be more believable (while still being very unbelievable). So yes I don’t believe it.
Then the text goes on to posit a wildly more improbable scenario, prefaced with “let me make it more believable”. What? No, that just made it massively more unbelievable, so the writer of this story probably has terrible epistemics, or at best is authoring an unreliable narrator character that does. Pretty much any further detail would make it less believable by conjunction.
What’s worse, that particular conjunction is pretty ridiculous. I can still imagine it happening in some amazingly contrived scenario, but brings up so many other questions like “how” that make even suspension of disbelief for a fictional situation difficult. In what manner would I have to kill it to rescue the child? Is it basically a full-grown dog (but still cute) that would threaten my own life if I approach, and I happen to have a gun with my swimsuit? Maybe there’s a supernatural barrier that’s tied to its life? In what way is any of this more believable even for a very unreliable narrator?
In my opinion, the usual utilitarian reading also ignores this aspect too though. The usual reading says that each person has the choice between accepting or rejecting the utilitarian logic, but a rejection of the utilitarian logic doesn’t look like leaving the city, leaving the child to suffer. It looks like actively fighting to bring the child out into the sunlight.
Aren’t you ignoring the end of the story (and the part the title references) though? It seems like the whole thing is buildup to the people who walk away from Omelas, who are implied to do so because this situation is terrible, despite the utilitarian calculus.
Seems to me like the intended meaning of that title was different when Le Guin started writing, and then things went in a different direction along the way, and Le Guin just accepted where it ended up.
My guess is it was initially intended to refer to those who wont accept the possibility of utopia, those who cynically turn away before it’s built, or those idealists who will swarm and rupture any near-perfect thing by picking and tearing at its smallest flaws, and as Tobias points out, much of it seems to have been written that way.
Then I think it might’ve gotten lost partway through, in the way a dream does, a contrivance is introduced to make a broader point, the contrivance grabs the attention of the dreamer to such an extent that the broader point gets forgotten, and “the ones who walk away from omelas” ended up walking away entirely in response to the contrivance.
So Le Guin faced a choice, she could have noticed that and trashed it and started over until she had something perfectly intentional, but successful authors generally don’t do that ime. They publish in large quantity and they publish entertaining rides rather than coherent parables. If the contrivance was engaging enough to obscure the broader point, then a successful author lets the work become about the contrivance.
When I was reading it I had the impression that the reactions of the people of Omelas to the child were meant to reference the readers’ own rationalizations of suffering, in real life as well as fiction, especially in this paragraph:
The child wouldn’t even like being released anyway; it’s a fundamental part of reality; if the child didn’t exist we couldn’t really be happy. That sounds like a big pile of rationalizations to me! The people of Omelas start by knowing the child’s suffering is wrong, aren’t able to do something about it, and then slowly come up with rationalizations until they can accept it.
So the ones who walk away are the ones that refuse to rationalize. This could imply that they are nothing but the ones that refuse to rationalize, that the “walking away” represents rejecting the city of Omelas as happy and resolving to build a better version of it. Or maybe I’m just imagining and this is not even close to the intended meaning.
Thanks for pointing out that this is a big omission! I’ve added a bit about it.
I don’t think ‘you’re not able to accept a pure utopia’ is the only theme of the story, but it is a large and (to me) dominant one.
If I read the ending in isolation, it does feel like a critique of utilitarianism. But since the story introduces the suffering child, the ‘utilitarian downside’ of the calculus, as a clear farce, I find it not a plausible reading overall.
Taking the ending seriously is as bit as if you took the following argument against utilitarianism seriously: “Imagine there’s a child drowning in a shallow pond. You’re wearing a swimsuit and could easily save them. Don’t believe me? Okay, let me make it more believable: imagine there’s also a cute puppy guarding the pond that you’d have to kill to reach the child. Would you do it?”
She mentions that they know where they are going, but she doesn’t mention why they are going. It could be because they’d personally be unhappy in such a place. It could be because they think there’s an even better possible place. It could be because they reject the utilitarian calculus. I’m genuinely confused what the end is about.
idk if you saw my second comment, but I think this explains it
This makes sense, especially given when Le Guin says “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.”. If she did describe it, the reader (who has not yet themselves left Omelas) would assume that place also has some horrible secret, and so her attempt would fail.
This seems very incoherent.
It starts with “Imagine” and then two sentences later asks “Don’t believe me?”
Believe what? Believe that I was asked to imagine something? I look back up a bit on the page, and I can have rather high credence that I was asked to imagine something.
Believe that I have imagined the scenario? I can have pretty high credence of imagining something that matches the description so that doesn’t fit either.
Believe that the imaginary scenario is real? Agreed, I definitely don’t believe that and there’s a lot of evidence that it’s false, but what relevance does it have? The text didn’t ask me to believe that.
Maybe believe that I could one day be in such a situation? Well, that’s definitely more believable but still very unlikely. I’m very much not in a habit of wearing swimsuits near ponds, though if it had been a swimming pool that would be more believable (while still being very unbelievable). So yes I don’t believe it.
Then the text goes on to posit a wildly more improbable scenario, prefaced with “let me make it more believable”. What? No, that just made it massively more unbelievable, so the writer of this story probably has terrible epistemics, or at best is authoring an unreliable narrator character that does. Pretty much any further detail would make it less believable by conjunction.
What’s worse, that particular conjunction is pretty ridiculous. I can still imagine it happening in some amazingly contrived scenario, but brings up so many other questions like “how” that make even suspension of disbelief for a fictional situation difficult. In what manner would I have to kill it to rescue the child? Is it basically a full-grown dog (but still cute) that would threaten my own life if I approach, and I happen to have a gun with my swimsuit? Maybe there’s a supernatural barrier that’s tied to its life? In what way is any of this more believable even for a very unreliable narrator?
In my opinion, the usual utilitarian reading also ignores this aspect too though. The usual reading says that each person has the choice between accepting or rejecting the utilitarian logic, but a rejection of the utilitarian logic doesn’t look like leaving the city, leaving the child to suffer. It looks like actively fighting to bring the child out into the sunlight.