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The narrator immediately changes that parameter by showing us the child, the one who absorbs all of Omelas’ negative aspects, and turns Omelas into an idyllic utopia into a terrifying dystopia. He spends so much time adjusting Omelas to fit his audience’s expectations that the only aspect left to change is the core of what the narrator says makes the city, the Festival, and the happiness of its people hard to believe: the lack of guilt or pain (Le Guin 3). He goes so far as to speak in abstract about the cultural identity of Omelas’ patrons as well as their recreational activities (Le Guin 2). The narrator continues to give an account of the Festival, but once again detours to tailor his play-by-play so that it can fit the desired Omelas experience parameters of his audience. By deviating from the Festival of Summer, the narrator has destroyed his own integrity as a storyteller and thus discredited the existence of Omelas itself. The narrator cuts down what he claims to be a non-fictional account by comparing Omelas to a fairy tale, and then begins to distort the facts so that his retelling of the Festival of Summer can fit our “own fancy bids” (Le Guin 2). Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once up a time” (Le Guin 1-2). The narrator tells us that Omelas is well educated, self-governed, emotionally developed people before immediately causing us to the doubt the existence of this utopia by stating “I wish I could convince you. The narrator gives the audience a descriptive secondhand account of the Festival of Summer, but detours almost immediately to describe the culture of Omelas instead of the Festival. Le Guin’s use of a narrator in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” discredits the existence of this utopian society. The author uses detailed imagery to show that the opulence on the surface of Omelas hides the truth just below the surface. That is the way that it is in Omelas: “If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place…all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed” (Le Guin 4). The only attention the child receives is when one of the superior surface-dwellers comes to witness the one who involuntarily suffers so that they can enjoy prosperity and freedom. The child stays in the closet its entire life and never gets to enjoy the magnificence that lies beyond the door of that closet. There is a child in Omelas that lives in a dirty broom closet, naked and afraid “Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect” (Le Guin 3). She paints Omelas as humanity at the height of its potential before throwing the entire society from its high horse with the living conditions of one child. Le Guin takes her time to describe in excruciating detail every aspect of Omelas from “the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks” (Le Guin 1) to the braids on the horses’ manes.
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As they walked through the streets they were enchanted by the great beauty that surrounded the city, enraptured by the music that played in the streets, and enticed by each other’s company. The people of Omelas filled the streets, headed “towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called Green’ Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms exercised their restive horses before the race” (Le Guin 1). The shining city of Omelas is introduced to us just in time for the Festival of Summer. Throughout the story, Le Guin uses imagery to illustrate the splendor and darkness Omelas. In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, Ursula Le Guin uses Imagery, Narration, and Metaphor to argue that a utopian society does not exist. Ursula Le Guin follows in the footsteps of Thomas More and presents a similar society in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. Utopia forced its readers to doubt the civilized societies that they lived in by exposing the immoral choices made behind the public’s prosperity and freedom.
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More named Utopia after the Greek root words for “no place” and “good place” and allowed the reader to decide which definition of utopia applied to the island society (Utopia 1). In 1516, Thomas More wrote a novel entitled Utopia about a society that seemed perfect on the surface, but had deeply rooted problems within its society. This essay was originally written for an English class and posted for your viewing pleasure.