(1)Īll of these residents would fit into the population of any city in a developed country. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows’ crossing flights over the music and the singing. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. Le Guin also provides a cross-section of the population of Omelas: The way Le Guin describes Omelas, it sounds like a village in Disneyworld, where everything is clean, almost saccharinely pretty, and neat. There are apparently no poor sections with run-down houses there are no factories spewing pollution into the air there are no businesses that have shut down because of a recession. Le Guin gives only positive characteristics to the physical description of the city. In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells. There was just enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. The city seems to be prosperous, clean, and safe, as described here: In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved” (1). Le Guin provides details of how the city looks as a festival begins, when she says, “The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the first few paragraphs of the story, Le Guin describes the community of Omelas in a way that closely parallels a typical community in a developed country. The primary reason the story failed to transform American conscience as a whole may be precisely because Le Guin did not anticipate how easy it is for humans to ignore ideas and concepts, expressed in words alone, that produce moral discomfort.
Even though the story has powerful images, it does not seem to have had the author’s desired effect of transforming the American conscience. However, to an average reader, the story resonates as a cautionary tale about the consequences of valuing the good of one community, such as a developed country, over the welfare of an individual, such as a worker in a third world country. Still others view it as Le Guin’s attempt to explain the workings of human nature and religion (Collins 525). Others view it as Le Guin’s indictment of first world countries’ financial exploitation of third world countries (Collins 525). Some critics view the story as a rejection of the moral pragmatism supported by William James, alluded to in the subtitle of the story (Povinelli 510). When approaching Ursula Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” readers can interpret the story in several different ways.
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