One of the parts of the story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” that really made me think and look back throughout the reading is the last several sentences when Le Guin describes the people who leave the town after seeing the child. Le Guin puts it like “They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.” This is so intriguing to me and made me try to decipher what this truly meant and/or parallels from the real world that I could find.My guess is that the ones who walk away are like those in any society that recognize an injustice or flaw and strive to fix it… or at least they cannot continue being a happy part of the happy town knowing there happiness is at the cost of another. When Le Guin says “But they seem to know where they are going,” I interpreted this as, while the literal solution is unclear, those who walk away knowing that the direction that they want to be going is away from the ideologies of the happy town. They know that they are headed in the best direction, even if they do not know where the destination is quite yet.
This story is clearly about followership and fear in the face of the unknown. The followers who choose to stay in the town, happy, even though they know a child is suffering reminds me of the phenomena that happen in real life. Millions, trillions of people go on with their lives knowing of the troubles, inequalities, and horrors of the world are occurring and will continue occurring because these thoughts are swept under the rug or saved for later by so many.
I liked how you interpreted the quotation by the author and I agree with your interpretation that although they leave and my not be sure where they want to go they sure know that they want to be going in the direction away from the town.
I really like your interpretation of the reading. We’ve read a couple of examples of groups facing adversity, but this reading in particular reminded me of the allegory of the cave. Often times, when people are presented the unknown, they reject it and claim that it is untrue.
I thought this story was really interesting because although it never mentions one specific leader or leading force, the community continues to follow a dominating idea. I also thought it was interesting that once the children are exposed to the tragedies of the child who is locked away, they are upset by it. Unfortunately for many, that feeling doesn’t last long and they are able to continue to live in the “city of happiness.”