Essay on Ursula K. le Guin and Utopia

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White, Rylan
Jones, Kelsea
2015/01/16
MW 12:30-1:50 The Sacrifice of One for the Happiness of All A utopia is a society that is in harmony and balance. The people in a utopia are happy. In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” a story by Ursula K. LeGuin, there is a moral question. In this exemplification essay I will describe the sacrifice of a boy, a man and a people. The answer to the moral question is as such. The sacrifice of one human being is worth the happiness, and solidity of an entire utopia, whether forced or by free will, in any circumstance from a reason based standpoint. In the ones who walk away from Omelas, there is a boy who is the one sacrificed. The boy is held under deplorable conditions. An excerpt from the “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, “It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of sores, as it sits in its own excrement continuously” (LeGuin 4). This child is tortured but that is the sacrifice of one from the utopia to exist. This boy must make the sacrifice whether forced or by free will it does not matter. The fact of the matter is that without the sacrifice of this boy, the utopia is not possible for the city of Omelas. In the next paragraph I will give a real world example, which correlates to “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, and answers the moral question. For the utopia to exist in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” one must make the ultimate sacrifice, and become a hero. Just like the boy, Jesus Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. His sacrifice paved the way for a future utopia. He suffered like very few do, just like the boy in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” sacrificed. It is only with great sacrifice can a utopia be built. A passage from the bible states “And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left”(Luke 23). He made a sacrifice so a utopia could be. Ursula LeGuin wrote the short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. In that story she said a very deep quote, and it goes as follows. “To praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence, is to lose hold of everything else” (LeGuin 1). Yes the people of Omelas lost everything to get their happiness. She writes, “The terms are absolute” (LeGuin 4). There are some in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” who do walk away. They are driven by an emotional view point that their happiness is not worth the life of the boy. In a passage by LeGuin it states, “They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the
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