Blog Post #6: LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walked away from Omelas”
What does the child in the room represent?
What is the moral or theme of the story?
17 thoughts on “Blog Post #6: LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walked away from Omelas””
My interpretation of the child in the room is that he/she represents the lower class in society. Just as the child is down in the basement, the lower class is seemingly in the bottom of the class pyramid. It states that the city of Omelas will cease to be joyous if the child in the room were to leave. The people of Omelas are a representation of the wealthy first class who tend to benefit off of the labor of those in the lower class. If all of a sudden the lower class decided to rebel and climb up the class pyramid, then it would dethrone those at the top. The moral of the story is there cannot be good without bad. For Omelas to continue to prosper the child must remain suffering in the basement. For society to continue functioning it must have a distinction in class between those in control and those who take orders. These are the basic elements of civilized society, as without it there would only be anarchy.
I believe the child in the room alludes to Jesus as the sacrificial lamb. I believe this symbolizes how for life to be great for some people, it is always at the expense of others. The child represents the less fortunate of the world. Whether that be less fortunate financially, in health or in any other way. The child represents the unexplained unfairness in the world. The theme that I got from the story is that the vast majority of people are okay with improving their own well being at the expense of others. There are only a few of the ones who walk away from Omelas. These are the few that feel guilty about accepting the privileges they have while someone else is suffering. Everybody else accepts the guilt of knowing how good their life is without being able to help someone who is suffering. This guilt reminds me of the guilt I feel when walking passed someone who is homeless.
From my interpretation, the child represents the whole disgust, guilt, unhappiness, imbecility and inequity collected from the whole town. Citizens of the town had to have something terrifying, dirty, unacceptable to society, instead of having it in their own houses. Something had to accumulate in itself all the cruelty, disgust and horror that the inhabitants of Omela didn’t have. That is why all citizens of the city visited the child and took their kids there to give them an opportunity to see that and feel “anger, outrage, impotence, despite and disgust” at the same time. All depended on this child. “It”, how the author called the child, had to be in this place in order to give the citizens of the city calm and poise in their own lives. The theme of the story is that everything can never be perfect, beautiful, untouched and joyful. Something has to be terrible and unfair.
I think that the child represents the flaws in society because of the way she is treated. She is kept in a dark room and no one decides to help her even when she is crying for help. It shows the greed of people because they want to follow the norm and prosper for themselves. It says how everyone’s happiness in the story is dependent on “wholly on this child’s abominable misery”. It also says how some people do feel guilt for this child but they can’t risk their own happiness in helping one child. It kind of reminds me of the trolley experiment where some people may choose to save multiple people instead of one person on the railroad. I think the theme is that society is based on classes and capitalism where there has to be a difference in class in order for prosperity. It shows the reality of the world we live in as people have to suffer in order for people to prosper.
The child in the room represents the people of Omelas denying the truth that they are not truly free. The “happiness” that is felt throughout the city denies the development of technology, such as central heating, that could benefit the citizens. It denies the necessity of positive change and holds the people in fear. The citizens must be content with what they already have and not wish for more. The child in the room is malnourished and sits in its own excrements in the same way that the people of Omelas are starved of a better lifestyle and forced to accept their captivity. Similar to how the captors refuse to release the child, most citizens refuse to accept and release this truth. Based on this symbol, the moral of this story is that one is not free unless one can accept the truth.
The child holds all of the pain and suffering so that the people of Omelas don’t have to. The child represents a darker part of society that shows that as long as people are doing well themselves, they can ignore the problems of others. The citizens of Omelas are upset by the child, but convince themselves that it is necessary for the greater good. The child is a sacrifice for the people to be happy. The moral of the story is that even if something seems perfect, there has to be a dark side as no place can be completely without suffering. There has to be misery to be happiness, darkness to be light.
The child in the story represents everyone as individuals. We are all aware of the bad things that we do, hear, see and put up with. However, while knowing this, we tend to either keep up with our everyday life, or feel guilty about it and walk away from the problem. We all live with this scenario of the child in our everyday lives. An example could be the fact that i know it was bad to call my friend ugly. I know that this was bad and ill either try to justify myself or sweep it under the rug and sort of ignore it. The message tells us that its better for us to be real with ourselves and everyone else. We should deal with our “pain / conflicts” and we shouldnt put them on others.
The child in the story to me represents a problem that someone is faced it. The child, like a problem, is set aside and people tend to look over them without trying to fix it. Normally there are people who think that the problem is just minor and that it won’t affect them as much. They think that they like in this city like Omelas and that the problem after being aware of it, the city will crumble and they won’t experience the joy in the city. People would tend to leave the problem and let it side there and hope somehow it gets out and that it could fix itself. People don’t want to lose the current joy they are feeling and instead shoulder the guilt of thinking what to do about it. The moral I feel the story is trying to reveal is that you should try to fix whatever struggle you have in life and not let it sit.
The child in the story represents a balance in Omelas, as without the child suffering in the room, everyone believes that they will suffer. I feel like they have spoken the idea that everything would crumble if the child did not exist into a reality, and everyone else simply conforms to that idea. It has become a routine for people around Omelas to come check out the child, and although some people feel pity for the child, they know in their heads that they can not do anything about it because it is out of their hands and power. I think that the moral of the story is that there must be a balance of good and bad for anything to continue.
I interpret the child in the room as the people that are being discriminated against in our society, such as homeless people and people in poverty. ‘It looks about six, but is actually ten’ refers to the lack of physical development corresponding to one’s age, which is usually a result of malnourishment as a result of lack of access to proper food, common in poverty stricken areas. As the resources in the world is finite, not everyone can share the same experiences, therefore economies need to allocate the resources, often in the form of a market. People that are disadvantaged in this economy are like the child, although not necessarily lacking physical development, but perhaps are lacking education levels.
I believe the moral of the story is a society cannot be perfect and is bound to be unequal. Communist utopias are not possible as there will always be people who are more equal than others.
The child in the room is a scapegoat and symbolizes injustice in the society of Omelas. The narrator only uses the pronoun “it” when describing the child, reinforcing the child’s status as an object rather than a person. The child is malnourished and has little to no contact with others. Even though it has been objectified and tortured for years, the child still remembers sunlight and its mother’s voice—thus, it remembers what it was like to be treated like a human being well enough to understand that its current state is inhumane. It experienced happiness enough to understand what it is enduring now is so wrong. I think the moral of the story is justice and selflessness. Essentially, the story asks if you could live with yourself if you knew your happiness was dependent on someone’s suffering. Most citizens of Omelas put themselves first and decide that their happiness is more important than the child’s suffering.
The child in the room represents the cost in which the people of Omelas believe to be necessary for their society to prosper. Many people are frustrated over the fact that their society is effectively allowing a child to be tortured but find some rationalization to justify it such as all the good things coming to an end if the child is given warmth and happiness. I believe the moral of the story is that society can grow use to anything when given enough time to think about and justify it. There doesn’t seem to be any practical reason that a child is being tortured but either out of fear of ruining the perfect society or some warped justification of the act, everyone eventually learns to become apathetic to the whole ordeal and the child being kept in the basement makes it all the easier to just ignore.
The child in the story represents everything the people of Omelas are choosing to ignore. The child is the suffering and trapped, this balances their happiness and freedom. The child shows everyone that there is something wrong in society and not everything can be perfect. For everyone else to live this way one innocent person has to suffer. I think the moral of the story is that no one is perfect or happy all the time, everyone has problems to deal with, you just don’t see them sometimes.
To me it seems like the child represents poverty, lower class, poor people. As it is mentioned in the story, some people of Omelas look at the lonely starved child as inferior, disgusting, not even human. Some want to help but are afraid their own safety and well-being is at risk. And that ties to the theme of the story, rich vs poor, a problem in our society. The people of Omelas being the rich, and the child being the poor. Although some want to help, they believe it’s a lost cause, they believe there must be poor for there to be rich. So the child is essentially a sacrifice for their own good.
This story about a city called Omelas is a representation of a community consist of bad deeds. The child in the room is a representation of how everyone knows there is something awful going on in this place but nobody is willing to clean up the mess or stand up for what is right. ” what else, what else belongs in the joyous city?” on page#338, shows how people are only concerned about their daily lives instead of thinking about the future or to do something good for other’s who they are surrounded by all the time. This story reminds of NYC subway stations where I go twice a day and there are so many wrong things I get to see daily with the people acting a certain way and the homeless people living in harsh conditions, There are many people including myself who can help them but we walk right past them because there are many things we are afraid of that can happen.
To me the child represents the moral dilemma of choosing the benefits of the many over the suffering of the few. It can be easy to stomach the injustices of so many when you are in comfort. The author uses the child to illustrate this concept clearly. There is also some martyr symbolism and slight allusion to Jesus Christ in that he suffered (albeit willingly) for man’s sins.
I think the ultimate moral I took away from LeGuin’s story was that there is always an option to leave. If you are left with a choice with great reward but terrible consequence, you always have to choice to leave, to opt out, or to renege.
I believe the child in the room represents lower-class individuals who are homeless, etc. Firstly, the room is in the basement meaning that that the child is “under” the other people. This can be said for many people in today’s world of inequality as well where people believe that they are “above” others simply because of their financial status. Furthermore, the author says that the child appears to be five-six years of age but is actually ten. This represents the poor image that homeless/lower-income people have. Just because they’ve ended up in the situation that they are, it doesn’t mean that they’re not good at anything, it just means that they haven’t been as fortunate as some others. The author also talks about nobody being there in the room but sometimes some adults or groups of adults show up for a short period of time. This can be seen the same way with charity organisations. They help these individuals for short periods of time but (mostly) aren’t helping them get on their own feet. The underlying statement in the story for me was showing the reality of the world as it is with people living on extreme ends. Some will have all the happiness you can imagine while some will be completely in the dark about everything, silently suffering.
My interpretation of the child in the room is that he/she represents the lower class in society. Just as the child is down in the basement, the lower class is seemingly in the bottom of the class pyramid. It states that the city of Omelas will cease to be joyous if the child in the room were to leave. The people of Omelas are a representation of the wealthy first class who tend to benefit off of the labor of those in the lower class. If all of a sudden the lower class decided to rebel and climb up the class pyramid, then it would dethrone those at the top. The moral of the story is there cannot be good without bad. For Omelas to continue to prosper the child must remain suffering in the basement. For society to continue functioning it must have a distinction in class between those in control and those who take orders. These are the basic elements of civilized society, as without it there would only be anarchy.
I believe the child in the room alludes to Jesus as the sacrificial lamb. I believe this symbolizes how for life to be great for some people, it is always at the expense of others. The child represents the less fortunate of the world. Whether that be less fortunate financially, in health or in any other way. The child represents the unexplained unfairness in the world. The theme that I got from the story is that the vast majority of people are okay with improving their own well being at the expense of others. There are only a few of the ones who walk away from Omelas. These are the few that feel guilty about accepting the privileges they have while someone else is suffering. Everybody else accepts the guilt of knowing how good their life is without being able to help someone who is suffering. This guilt reminds me of the guilt I feel when walking passed someone who is homeless.
From my interpretation, the child represents the whole disgust, guilt, unhappiness, imbecility and inequity collected from the whole town. Citizens of the town had to have something terrifying, dirty, unacceptable to society, instead of having it in their own houses. Something had to accumulate in itself all the cruelty, disgust and horror that the inhabitants of Omela didn’t have. That is why all citizens of the city visited the child and took their kids there to give them an opportunity to see that and feel “anger, outrage, impotence, despite and disgust” at the same time. All depended on this child. “It”, how the author called the child, had to be in this place in order to give the citizens of the city calm and poise in their own lives. The theme of the story is that everything can never be perfect, beautiful, untouched and joyful. Something has to be terrible and unfair.
I think that the child represents the flaws in society because of the way she is treated. She is kept in a dark room and no one decides to help her even when she is crying for help. It shows the greed of people because they want to follow the norm and prosper for themselves. It says how everyone’s happiness in the story is dependent on “wholly on this child’s abominable misery”. It also says how some people do feel guilt for this child but they can’t risk their own happiness in helping one child. It kind of reminds me of the trolley experiment where some people may choose to save multiple people instead of one person on the railroad. I think the theme is that society is based on classes and capitalism where there has to be a difference in class in order for prosperity. It shows the reality of the world we live in as people have to suffer in order for people to prosper.
The child in the room represents the people of Omelas denying the truth that they are not truly free. The “happiness” that is felt throughout the city denies the development of technology, such as central heating, that could benefit the citizens. It denies the necessity of positive change and holds the people in fear. The citizens must be content with what they already have and not wish for more. The child in the room is malnourished and sits in its own excrements in the same way that the people of Omelas are starved of a better lifestyle and forced to accept their captivity. Similar to how the captors refuse to release the child, most citizens refuse to accept and release this truth. Based on this symbol, the moral of this story is that one is not free unless one can accept the truth.
The child holds all of the pain and suffering so that the people of Omelas don’t have to. The child represents a darker part of society that shows that as long as people are doing well themselves, they can ignore the problems of others. The citizens of Omelas are upset by the child, but convince themselves that it is necessary for the greater good. The child is a sacrifice for the people to be happy. The moral of the story is that even if something seems perfect, there has to be a dark side as no place can be completely without suffering. There has to be misery to be happiness, darkness to be light.
The child in the story represents everyone as individuals. We are all aware of the bad things that we do, hear, see and put up with. However, while knowing this, we tend to either keep up with our everyday life, or feel guilty about it and walk away from the problem. We all live with this scenario of the child in our everyday lives. An example could be the fact that i know it was bad to call my friend ugly. I know that this was bad and ill either try to justify myself or sweep it under the rug and sort of ignore it. The message tells us that its better for us to be real with ourselves and everyone else. We should deal with our “pain / conflicts” and we shouldnt put them on others.
The child in the story to me represents a problem that someone is faced it. The child, like a problem, is set aside and people tend to look over them without trying to fix it. Normally there are people who think that the problem is just minor and that it won’t affect them as much. They think that they like in this city like Omelas and that the problem after being aware of it, the city will crumble and they won’t experience the joy in the city. People would tend to leave the problem and let it side there and hope somehow it gets out and that it could fix itself. People don’t want to lose the current joy they are feeling and instead shoulder the guilt of thinking what to do about it. The moral I feel the story is trying to reveal is that you should try to fix whatever struggle you have in life and not let it sit.
The child in the story represents a balance in Omelas, as without the child suffering in the room, everyone believes that they will suffer. I feel like they have spoken the idea that everything would crumble if the child did not exist into a reality, and everyone else simply conforms to that idea. It has become a routine for people around Omelas to come check out the child, and although some people feel pity for the child, they know in their heads that they can not do anything about it because it is out of their hands and power. I think that the moral of the story is that there must be a balance of good and bad for anything to continue.
I interpret the child in the room as the people that are being discriminated against in our society, such as homeless people and people in poverty. ‘It looks about six, but is actually ten’ refers to the lack of physical development corresponding to one’s age, which is usually a result of malnourishment as a result of lack of access to proper food, common in poverty stricken areas. As the resources in the world is finite, not everyone can share the same experiences, therefore economies need to allocate the resources, often in the form of a market. People that are disadvantaged in this economy are like the child, although not necessarily lacking physical development, but perhaps are lacking education levels.
I believe the moral of the story is a society cannot be perfect and is bound to be unequal. Communist utopias are not possible as there will always be people who are more equal than others.
The child in the room is a scapegoat and symbolizes injustice in the society of Omelas. The narrator only uses the pronoun “it” when describing the child, reinforcing the child’s status as an object rather than a person. The child is malnourished and has little to no contact with others. Even though it has been objectified and tortured for years, the child still remembers sunlight and its mother’s voice—thus, it remembers what it was like to be treated like a human being well enough to understand that its current state is inhumane. It experienced happiness enough to understand what it is enduring now is so wrong. I think the moral of the story is justice and selflessness. Essentially, the story asks if you could live with yourself if you knew your happiness was dependent on someone’s suffering. Most citizens of Omelas put themselves first and decide that their happiness is more important than the child’s suffering.
The child in the room represents the cost in which the people of Omelas believe to be necessary for their society to prosper. Many people are frustrated over the fact that their society is effectively allowing a child to be tortured but find some rationalization to justify it such as all the good things coming to an end if the child is given warmth and happiness. I believe the moral of the story is that society can grow use to anything when given enough time to think about and justify it. There doesn’t seem to be any practical reason that a child is being tortured but either out of fear of ruining the perfect society or some warped justification of the act, everyone eventually learns to become apathetic to the whole ordeal and the child being kept in the basement makes it all the easier to just ignore.
The child in the story represents everything the people of Omelas are choosing to ignore. The child is the suffering and trapped, this balances their happiness and freedom. The child shows everyone that there is something wrong in society and not everything can be perfect. For everyone else to live this way one innocent person has to suffer. I think the moral of the story is that no one is perfect or happy all the time, everyone has problems to deal with, you just don’t see them sometimes.
To me it seems like the child represents poverty, lower class, poor people. As it is mentioned in the story, some people of Omelas look at the lonely starved child as inferior, disgusting, not even human. Some want to help but are afraid their own safety and well-being is at risk. And that ties to the theme of the story, rich vs poor, a problem in our society. The people of Omelas being the rich, and the child being the poor. Although some want to help, they believe it’s a lost cause, they believe there must be poor for there to be rich. So the child is essentially a sacrifice for their own good.
This story about a city called Omelas is a representation of a community consist of bad deeds. The child in the room is a representation of how everyone knows there is something awful going on in this place but nobody is willing to clean up the mess or stand up for what is right. ” what else, what else belongs in the joyous city?” on page#338, shows how people are only concerned about their daily lives instead of thinking about the future or to do something good for other’s who they are surrounded by all the time. This story reminds of NYC subway stations where I go twice a day and there are so many wrong things I get to see daily with the people acting a certain way and the homeless people living in harsh conditions, There are many people including myself who can help them but we walk right past them because there are many things we are afraid of that can happen.
To me the child represents the moral dilemma of choosing the benefits of the many over the suffering of the few. It can be easy to stomach the injustices of so many when you are in comfort. The author uses the child to illustrate this concept clearly. There is also some martyr symbolism and slight allusion to Jesus Christ in that he suffered (albeit willingly) for man’s sins.
I think the ultimate moral I took away from LeGuin’s story was that there is always an option to leave. If you are left with a choice with great reward but terrible consequence, you always have to choice to leave, to opt out, or to renege.
I believe the child in the room represents lower-class individuals who are homeless, etc. Firstly, the room is in the basement meaning that that the child is “under” the other people. This can be said for many people in today’s world of inequality as well where people believe that they are “above” others simply because of their financial status. Furthermore, the author says that the child appears to be five-six years of age but is actually ten. This represents the poor image that homeless/lower-income people have. Just because they’ve ended up in the situation that they are, it doesn’t mean that they’re not good at anything, it just means that they haven’t been as fortunate as some others. The author also talks about nobody being there in the room but sometimes some adults or groups of adults show up for a short period of time. This can be seen the same way with charity organisations. They help these individuals for short periods of time but (mostly) aren’t helping them get on their own feet. The underlying statement in the story for me was showing the reality of the world as it is with people living on extreme ends. Some will have all the happiness you can imagine while some will be completely in the dark about everything, silently suffering.