The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Seminar Reflection Part One

Lacey Meek

   The smell was indescribable.  That was the first thing that Ivory could think as the door swung outward smoothly.  It was absolutely putrid: the reek of sewage and tang of blood mixed with human body odor and goodness knew what else.  Her stomach churned wretchedly and Ivory clapped a hand over her mouth and nose.  “Look Ivory.  Look because it disgusts you, because it is cruel and inhumane, and because you must truly understand all of the blessings that we are given.”  Nate was grim at this moment.  Ivory took a step forward, and peered into the oily blackness.  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and then she was able to view true horror.  A naked child sat in the patch of light, blinking back at the siblings without comprehension.  It –for it was impossible to tell if it was male or female under the layers of filth and muck- was matted and abused, covered in sores and sitting in its own droppings.  Ivory gasped and stumbled back.  The creature shrieked back and filthy little fingers scraped at the polished hardwood floor as it tried to clamor up.  Nate shoved it back down into the cellar none too gently.

   That had been a little over four years ago.  She’d been counting.  Now it was night, and flames were popping and snapping in the hearth before her.  She couldn’t force herself to stay in that place any longer after seeing the child.  He still haunted her dreams, morphing them into nightmares.  Ivory shuddered and pulled the heavy blanket tighter around her shoulders.  “Are you cold, child?”

   “No, I’m alright.”  She looked up at the creased and weathered face of her rescuer and more memories flooded her mind.

   Ivory walked.  She walked in the middle of the night, down empty streets that wound uncertainly from Omelas.  In her small bag was a change of clothes, a blanket, and some bread and water.  She had packed in a haze, not really thinking.  Only when a league separated her and the village of Omelas did her mind finally begin to clear and her stumbling trudge turn to a stride of purpose.  There were other cities out there, though she had visited them before and found none particularly to her tastes.  She could walk to Salem and take a ferry to the next country.  No one would ever stop her.  The people of Omelas never tried to stop the walkers.  Maybe it was because they wished they were strong enough to walk as well.

   She had never expected to make it this far.  Ivory had expected that she’d either give up or die beforehand, and she nearly had several times.  But somehow, she kept walking every day.  This was the city of the mountains, Maelos, and for the first time in years, she was perfectly content to sit by a fire and rest.  “You walked, didn’t you child?”  That was Davis, the man who had found her collapsed by the city gates.  “You walked from Omelas.”

   Ivory nodded, staring into the flames.  “I did.  How have you heard of it though?”

   Davis laughed now, leaning back in an arm chair.  “I walked as well.”

   She peered at him more closely now.  “You did?  And you stayed?”

   “Yes, and I’m the same as many others who live here.  We’re all looking for the same chance, aren’t we?  To purge ourselves of the memories.  We want to make our own happiness and our own prosperity.  We want to escape the guilt.”

   Ivory stood now, and walked to the window.  The mountains rose like imposing monoliths, encircling Maelos within stone walls.  Outside, the full moon drenched the world in silver, highlighting the stone buildings that composed the city.  Maelos had the aura of a place much more satisfied and filled than Omelas.  She liked it.  “Maybe I will stay too,” She whispered to the city.  “At least for a time.”  Maybe for a lifetime.

Seminar Reflection Part Two

Lacey Meek

   1: What is the difference between the people who walk away and the people who stay in Omelas?

   Those who leave Omelas are the ones who can’t accept the cruelty that the child in the closet is exposed to.  It seems to be a unanimous feeling as well, because in the story she talks about how those who leave all seem to know where they're going.  Whether or not this is the best course of action when they could free the child, they still choose to do something.  Those who stay choose to do nothing, and can accept it, or at the very least, they can ignore the child because they’d rather be happy than miserable and see just how miserable they could be if they were like the child.  I'd like to think that the people who leave want to be happy without the child's help.  They leave because they feel helpless to help him, this causes the lack of guilt in the town.

   It says in the story that there is no guilt in Omelas, and I believe that this is chiefly due to the fact that those who leave are the ones who feel true guilt.  If all who can't get past it feel guilty and leave, then there can be no guilt because the rest get over it.  Maybe those who stay tell themselves that they can't help him, that it's for the greater good, and that they didn't put him in there so they really didn't do anything wrong to the child.  But those who leave do feel guilt and realize that simply by letting him stay there, they have committed several violences against him.  That, I believe, is the biggest difference between these two parties: the ability to move on and ignore the child's presence (or at least do nothing about it), or being so affected by the child that they felt there was nothing else they could do but leave.

   2: Are you more like the ones who stay in Omelas, or the ones who walk away?

   I believe that the biggest factor in answering this question is the difference between who I am, and who I wish I could be.  The person who I wish I could be is more courageous.  She can stand up to others and is strong enough to break the cultural hegemony that we have fallen into.  However, the person I am is far less brave, and is very keen on keeping others happy rather than standing up for her beliefs.  There are good points to being this person too, but by being who I am I don't believe that I am much like the people who walk away.  I couldn't walk away from my own towns of Omelas without a great deal of strain.

   To answer, I would have to say that I am more like the people who stay in Omelas but I am always working towards someone who has the strength to walk away.  A big question that I have though is how do I walk away?  In this world, what am I walking away from?  Where do I walk to, since this is clearly a metaphorical statement?  I believe that I use these questions often as stalls, and that others do too, so that we don't have to walk away.  We are situated comfortably in out lives and in a world with this many distractions, it becomes easy to turn the other way from our problems, out “children in the closet”.  But we can always do our best, and I will continue to do so, so that maybe one day I will be able to take a stand against injustice, sort of like how I feel the people who walk away do, maybe in the only way that they can.