In a perfect society, the citizens would want to enhance their living conditions and better their technologies. A Utopian society is filled with people who contribute to the wellbeing of their community, and are always desiring to advance their way of life.
They are satisfied with doing nothing to better their lives. The Omelasians are not motivated to further their knowledge, and education is not a priority to them. Omelas is aware of the new technologies in other parts of the world, but they choose not to better their own society by adopting these advancements, and are instead living like primitive cave people. This lack of moral structure indicates another reason why Omelas is not a good example of a Utopian society.
THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS FREE
The Omelasians do not show any civilized morals, and they are basically free to do what they please, as long as it does not disrupt the peace in the community.
Utopian societies are greatly characterized by a perfect, fair government with moral citizens. In Omelas, the people do not really have a form of government, and their only main job is to survive. The Omelasian lifestyle is that of uncivilized behavior, with the citizens spending their time frolicking around naked and riding horses instead of contributing to the advancement of their society. Utopia is largely based on the idea of social perfection, therefore this aspect of torture in Omelas does not exemplify a Utopian society. The torturing of children is not something to be found in an ideal society, where everyone should be treated equally with natural rights given to them. This is definitely not a characteristic of Utopia, and it even shocks some people into leaving the community. The Omelasians believe that this is necessary for them to coexist happily. The citizens of Omelas have chosen a young boy that they hold captive as a spectacle of torture in order to motivate their society to remain peaceful. A more appropriate reading should be required for students in my grade that embodies a morally civilized version of Utopia. Omelas is a peaceful group of uncivilized people, but it is not a Utopian community. A society that is willing to torture an innocent young boy, spends its time riding horses naked instead of establishing a reasonable government, and has no desire to advance their lives or their technology, does not exemplify the true meaning of an ideal society. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is a warped version of this visionary Utopia, so I do not think it is a good reading to be used as a primary example. When writing his composition, Utopia (1516), Sir Thomas Moore envisioned this place as an ideal community with moral citizens, no war, and containing a fair, just government allowing political and social perfection.
THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS FULL
Yet it is their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives.When studying about Utopia, I believe that students should be required to read literature that embodies the full aspects of an ideal Utopian society. Therefore, to restore the ‘perfectness’ of Omelas, the citizens realize why the child must live in the conditions in which it does and the sacrifice that is being made, and no longer feel remorse or regret, “Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. The narrator tries to maintain the idea of two worlds that completely contradict each other it is a vital part of her strategy to make Omelas an understandable and imaginable reality. This paradox being that the source of their happiness is what causes them to be upset. However, there is evidence that the people experience guilt when mention of the suffering child arises in the narrative, “Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox.” (Le Guin 7). In doing this, she constructs a world of happiness and a world of suffering …show more content… It is appropriate that the narrator mentions the idea of ‘no guilt’ in the text, “One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt.” (Le Guin 6). the narrator provides many versions of Omelas when she changes details about the city, however, these types of worlds seem to fall into two opposing worlds based on the concept of good versus evil. In Ursula Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, the narrator struggles with the problem of creating a realistic ‘perfect world’, and as a solution she has created two contradictory worlds in which the existence of one is dependant on the other. However, if a perfect world contains suffering, it then becomes flawed. Show More The idea of a perfect world is very complex and often confusing to understand it becomes simpler to imagine such world if suffering existed within it.