Read this when
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Would you stay in the perfect city if you knew the price? 🏙️
Who it's for
Le Guin based the story on a question from William James: would you accept a world of happiness if it rested on the suffering of one lost soul? The story doesn't answer it; it hands the question to the reader, which is why so many people find it lodged in thei.
Feelings it meets
What it is
The narrator describes Omelas, a joyful city celebrating its summer festival, and invites the reader to fill in the details of its happiness however they like. Then comes the condition: the city's prosperity depends on one child kept alone in a dark basement room in misery. Every citizen learns of the child, and most come to accept the bargain.
Where to find it
In Le Guin's collections The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) and The Unreal and the Real, Volume Two (2012); widely anthologized and taught; libraries.
Before you start
Heads up: A child kept in neglect and squalor.
Age: Ages 14+
