The people of Omelas also can’t take their own happiness seriously without the suffering child:
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 sniveling 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 story emphasizes the avoidance of guilt:
One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. … To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in
Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the
chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.
My reading of this: The inhabitants need to avoid guilt, need to justify torturing the child to themselves and each other; and, while torturing the child doesn’t materially do anything, to stop would be to admit that it was never necessary, which would invite guilt. It’s a kind of terrible punishment-of-nonpunishers equilibrium.
The ones who walk away are the ones who recognize all of this and are no longer willing to participate in the collective illusion (hence, alone).
Importantly (though, I think, consistently with both this and the standard reading), The Wind’s Twelve Quarters introduces “The Day Before the Revolution”, a story about an anarchist revolutionary in the same world as The Dispossessed, with “This story is about one of the ones who walked away from Omelas.”
The people of Omelas also can’t take their own happiness seriously without the suffering child:
The story emphasizes the avoidance of guilt:
My reading of this: The inhabitants need to avoid guilt, need to justify torturing the child to themselves and each other; and, while torturing the child doesn’t materially do anything, to stop would be to admit that it was never necessary, which would invite guilt. It’s a kind of terrible punishment-of-nonpunishers equilibrium.
The ones who walk away are the ones who recognize all of this and are no longer willing to participate in the collective illusion (hence, alone).
Importantly (though, I think, consistently with both this and the standard reading), The Wind’s Twelve Quarters introduces “The Day Before the Revolution”, a story about an anarchist revolutionary in the same world as The Dispossessed, with “This story is about one of the ones who walked away from Omelas.”
I like this reading, I hadn’t thought about it before!