Scapegoating has always been society’s way of rationalizing the mistakes that it has made. The society must find someone to blame for their actions and so more times than not they make scapegoat out of the minor, the weak and the helpless. This idea of scapegoating can be seen in Ursula Le Guin’s “The One’s Who Walk Away From Omelas”.
The city of Omelas is shown to be a place of joy and happiness. A perfect society with “no king”, no grief or sorrow. No fighting or wars, “they did not use swords, or keep slaves”. The people of Omelas are all joyous, the “merry women carrying their babies and chatting”. Yet when one cares to look into the depths of this perfect city, this perfect society, they will see that this perfection is just an illusion. For in a room somewhere in Omelas there is a child, that is “nearly ten”, the child is locked into this room that is no bigger than a closet. The suffering of this child is accepted by the people of Omelas as the price of their happiness. The child represents the scapegoat in Le Guin’s story. This child is sacrificed so that the rest of society can live peacefully and without trouble. In todays society, while scapegoating may not be as horrifyingly blatant as in the story, it still does occur. The treatment of the child in the minds of the people of Omelas is justifiable as they think that even if the child was brought back out to be a part of society it would now be to “ imbecile to know
