The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

In this celebrated short story, Ursula K. Le Guin conjures Omelas, a shimmering city celebrating a summer festival — a place of music, joy, and untroubled happiness that the narrator dares the reader to believe in. Omelas seems too good to be true, and it is: the entire city's happiness depends, absolutely and knowingly, on the misery of a single child.

Somewhere beneath the beautiful city, a small child sits locked in a windowless room, half-starved and filthy, kept in perpetual wretchedness. Every citizen of Omelas learns of the child when they come of age, and understands that the moment anyone shows it kindness, all their prosperity will vanish. Most accept the bargain. A few, unable to live with it, simply walk away — toward a place the narrator cannot describe.

Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a spare, haunting philosophical fable about utilitarianism, complicity, and conscience — one of the most widely discussed short stories in modern literature.