Irony, Point of View, and the Significance of Good and Evil inin Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
Ursula Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” describes the city of Omelas and its people as a utopian place of near perfect joy and perfection, with one exception. Hidden deep within the city is a miserable child who lives locked alone and miserable, covered with sores, who begs to be released from its prison. The catch is, the citizens of Omelas know that “their happiness, the beauty of their city,” and all of the good and wonderful things about Omelas somehow depend upon the continual imprisonment of this child (257). The citizens of Omelas learn about this child when they are teenagers, and most of them remain complicit in its imprisonment, evidently considering it a fair trade-off for their otherwise perfect way of life. However, Le Guin writes that some people leave Omelas after seeing this child. She does not explain why, but writes, “ . . . they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas” (262). This story is designed, with its commentary, point of view, and irony to make readers consider concepts such as good and evil and what that means to society in a new way.
One of the key passages to understanding the message in Le Guin’s story is when she writes “ . . . we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain” (258). The truth of this statement can be seen in examples beyond this story, such as the news media’s focus on bad news and tragedy to gain viewers or the fact that in stories, movies, and video games, the villain is often one of the most well-developed, stylish, cool, and interesting characters. The people who select news media stories and movie-script writers who glorify violent villains influence the rest of society in a sort of collective understanding about what is important and interesting, which is rarely good news or happy stories. Although Le Guin refers to “the treason of the artist,” it is worth nothing that in order for art to be effective there must be an audience for the art. In other words, there is a complicity between artist and audience, or society in general, in order for good and evil to be valued incorrectly, as they often are. It seems as if this idea that good is boring and evil is interesting has existed for so long within society that it is difficult for most people to understand that something can be “evil” if it is not surrounded by drama and that something can be “good” and really interesting at the same time; it is as if society has come to an agreement that this is how things are, and this is how people must signify how to feel about and label things. In other words, society has become complicit with the “treason of the artist,” and though it is a banal idea, it is perhaps the greatest “evil,” that people do not think for themselves.
The point of view of the story is important for Le Guin in depicting the vision of Omelas to her readers. The voice is an almost-omniscient first-person point of view. As an omniscient type of point of view, the voice is capable of knowing all about the people of Omelas. The first person point of view is revealed in sentences like “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing” (260, emphasis mine). This type of point of view requires that the reader become personally involved with what is occurring in the story. One thing that Le Guin is attempting is to convince her readers that she is not committing “the treason of the artist.” Asking a question is a rhetorical device designed to cause readers to compare how they think, believe, and feel in respect to the story’s descriptions, events, and meanings. Only with this first-person point of view can Le Guin ask such a direct question to her readers. Most importantly, this direct question, in creating a direct relationship between the people of Omelas and the reader, allows readers to ask themselves after finishing the story whether or not they would be people who leave Omelas. It is important that the point of view is omniscient only about Omelas; the speaker does not know why people leave, but leaves it to readers to imagine the reasons why.
One of the big ironies of Le Guin’s story is that she takes so much time to convince her readers that the people of Omelas, in their happiness, are not a simple and boring people. They are mature, passionate, and interesting people. Happiness and Omelas’s appearance of perfection are equated with goodness. Then, the dark secret of the hidden child in Omelas is revealed, which makes it possible that the people of Omelas are actually not good, but evil. Therefore, it is ironic that though Le Guin has told readers that it is a “treason of the artist” to depict that which is evil as interesting, she has worked hard to convince us that the supposedly-good-but-revealed-as-evil citizens of Omelas are interesting folks. Though this is ironic, this irony is designed to highlight a different fact that Le Guin appears to believe that most people forget about, which is that things do not have to be either good or evil, but can also rest somewhere in between. It is a common expectation that things should be either good or bad, and it is much harder for people to understand that such simplicity is not true and not acceptable to some people. Part of her point is that the reasons people can leave Omelas is much more complicated that the simple question of labeling what is good and what is evil.
“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is a very effective story that can lead readers to many hours of introspection about concepts like good, evil, society’s scapegoats, complicity, and personal responsibility. It asks its readers to question what is accepted by society and what is accepted as reality. There are many ways to interpret Le Guin’s story, but the most important aspect of her story is that it is designed to get readers to ask questions of themselves and see their own points of view from a new perspective.
Works Cited
Guin, Ursula K. Le. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. Kennedy, X. J. and Dana Gioia. Interactive ed. Boston: Pearson Education (US), 2013. 257-262. Print.
