The Moral Weight of Happiness in Omelas
In The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula Le Guin suggested that true happiness always emanates from an underlying acceptance or awareness of suffering. Neither happiness nor pain could exist in isolation. Otherwise, the happiness of the people of Omelas would be nothing more than superficial and irresponsible pleasure, and the child’s suffering would be amount to nothing more than physical wounds, insufficient to convey the deeper spiritual torment described in the story.
After reading this story, I was confronted with a paradox: why does Guin explicitly note the absence of guilt in Omelas, yet illustrate the city tradition of adults bringing their children to visit the suffering child in the basement? The lack of guilt and every citizen’s full awareness of the child’s misery seems to be two conflicting mental states. How can the people in Omelas not feel guilty once knowing that their happiness is predicated on someone else’s misery? In other words, how do the people in Omelas come to accept this haunting fact? With this question in mind, I re-read the story and found the answer within another paradox: Every adult knows that witnessing the suffering child brings inner torment, so why must they still take their own children to see this suffering child? Would it not be better to abolish this city tradition and erase the memory of the suffering child in new generations?
The line “they all know it is there, all the people of Omelas”underscores the acceptance and awareness of suffering among the people in Omelas, which is the key to the two paradox. Those who stay in Omelas are not devoid of guilt; rather, their guilt has been alleviated and eventually desaturated through the city tradition - the ritual that forces young citizens to confront the moral foundation of their city - and that explains why they must keep this tradition: the acceptance and awareness of suffering create the necessary conditions for the true happiness. As the author repeatedly suggests, the people in Omelas are not simple folks and bland utopian; the confrontation, or embracement, of the miserable truth permeates their society, and this awareness taints their joy with a moral weight.
In this story, the narrator plays the role of an adult taking us, as if we were his or her children, to
visit the suffering child. We are first introduced to the beauty and harmony of Omelas and then compelled to confront the miserable child in the basement. While the people of Omelas hear music winding through the city streets and smell a cheerful faint sweetness of the air, they also haunted by the presence of the suffering child; while the child is imprisoned in a narrow, dirty room, surrounded by foul-smelling mops and sitting in its own excrement, it still remembers sunlight and its mother’s voice. The sharp contrast between the outside world and the basement completely distorts our understanding of the happiness of Omelas. The internal juxtapositions of happiness and suffering within the outside world and the basement further illustrate the intertwining connection between happiness and pain- A person who has never witnessed or endured suffering cannot understand true happiness. People who have never experienced happiness cannot realize they are in pain.
Instead of a fictional character specific to Omelas, the suffering child is more a thematic metaphor that alludes to the underlying suffering in our reality. The narrator’s language is filled with uncertainty and ambiguity when introducing the suffering child. The narrator uses the conjunction “or” between “a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas” and “the cellar of one of its spacious private homes” when locating where the child is locked; he also uses the phrase “could be” when identifying its sex and ambiguous words such as “about” and “nearly” when telling its age. The high uncertainty regarding the child’s identity indicates that whether it lives in the basement of the cellar, is a boy or a girl, and has an age of six or ten is not that important to the story. Moreover, the narrator even uses “it” to refer to the child instead of “he” or “she”. The dehumanization of the suffering child reduces a living being into an object, a phenomenon. The uncertainty and the dehumanization together generalize the suffering child of Omelas into a bigger picture: perhaps we are not as happy as the people of Omelas appear, but does the limited happiness we possess, which can be truly profound, also come with a certain amount of pain?
True happiness can be as simple as the contentment of climbing a mountain—exhausted and aching yet feeling an incredible sense of fulfillment and joy. It can be as grand as the stability and harmony of a country—It can also be as grand as the stability and harmony of a country—recognizing that every peaceful corner of the world results from sacrifices made by generations of defenders can deepen our appreciation for the tranquility we often take for granted. Perhaps many of the readers, after finishing the story, would assume that the author is consciously praising the brave ones who leave Omelas—their moral integrity and conscience deserves commendation. However, I also see admirable qualities of humanity in those who choose to stay, especially when each generation takes their children to visit the suffering child. They confront the weightiest pain directly and pass it down to their descendants. There is always a weight one must bear to obtain the true happiness
The people of Omelas do not directly endure physical suffering, but since “they all know it is there,” their conscience and morals make them feel compassion and sorrow for the suffering endured by others. This compassion, combined with their own helplessness, constitutes their pain in the form of moral anguish, shaping their collective consciousness and enriching their happiness.
Yet, the author leaves an intriguing question for us to contemplate by ending the story with those who choose to walk away from Omelas: their departure frees them from moral anguish, but do they still possess true happiness? The author describes their destination as a place of darkness, which makes me question whether they have truly found liberation. How can one speak of true happiness in a place devoid of suffering? Does the existential emptiness of a place deprived of any emotional experience genuinely feel easier to endure than the moral weight one must bear in order to own true happiness?
Such an isolated place does not exist in reality, and perhaps we should be grateful we have no other choices other than staying in Omelas, a land of curse and bless.