Similarities Between The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas And Good Old Neon

Realizing Truths in the Fictional Stories “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin and “Good Old Neon” by David Foster Wallace.

In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin and “Good Old Neon” by David Foster Wallace, the reader is able to form a comparative relationship between the worlds in the stories and their own. In both stories, the reader is able to find truths about their own world through the fictional ones expressed in the stories as they are shown through the characters and the societies in which those characters live. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and “Good Old Neon” both cause the reader to ask themselves questions about their own lives and the society in which they live, leading the reader

to realize and understand more about themselves and the world around them. Three of these realized truths include how much the reader is or is not like the characters they are reading about, how far their own society would go to be seen in a certain light, and if a person or society can be perfect if they or someone else must suffer the price of perfection.
“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and “Good Old Neon” both guide the reader to realize truths about themselves through the characters in the stories and allow them to recognize how much they are or are not like the characters they are reading about.

One of the questions the reader asks themselves while reading “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is whether or not they would be one of the individuals who walk away from Omelas, or stays and lives in the beautiful city despite knowing about its dark and inhumane characteristic. In the story, some of the citizens of Omelas leave the city because they cannot live with how their society is run and how it obtains its beauty. These individuals “go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates” (Le Guin 428). Much like the characters in the story, the reader is made to questions the ethics of the city and whether or not the end justifies the means. Through the reader asking themselves whether or not they would stay in Omelas, they begin to realize how much they are or are not like certain characters in the stories and begin to further discern their beliefs about right and wrong and how far they would go to achieve

happiness.
This is also shown in David Foster Wallace’s “Good Old Neon” through Neal’s fraudulence. While reading “Good Old Neon”, the reader is likely to ask themselves if they are a fraud like Neal and whether or not they are part of the fraudulence paradox. In the story, Neal describes the fraudulence paradox as
the more time and effort [one] put[s] into trying to appear impressive or attractive to other people, the less impressive or attractive [they feel] inside . . . And the more of a fraud [one] felt like, the harder [they] tried to convey an impressive or likable image of [themselves] so that other people [would not] fund out what a hollow, fraudulent person [they] really were (Wallace 147).
As Neal is a relatable character, hearing him call himself a fraud and explaining the fraudulence paradox causes the reader to wonder whether they themselves are a fraud. This questioning of one’s fraudulence leads the reader to further understand how far they would go to achieve happiness, much like Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. In a journal article by F. E. Sparshott entitled “Truth in Fiction”, Sparshott states that “It is true, that stories are about individuals. But the individuals must be represented as individuals of certain kinds, for example, as human beings, otherwise the few things said about them by the author could not be combined into a single semblance by the reader” (Sparshott 6). The reader must be able to identify with the characters in a story in some way in order to take what little the author has said about them and form them into full individuals. In order to do this, the reader applies some of their own characteristics to the character that author is writing about. This can be seen in both “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and “Good Old Neon”, as the readers ask themselves questions such as if they are like the characters in the story, how far they would go for happiness, and if they are a fraud. The answers the readers have to these questions lead them to realize truths about themselves.
Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and David Foster Wallace’s “Good Old Neon” both also guide the reader to realize truths about their own society through the societies written about in the stories. While reading about these fictional societies, the reader may begin to wonder how far their own society would go to be seen in a certain light. While reading “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, the reader may wonder how far their society would be willing to go to be perceived a certain way. In the story, the narrator describes Omelas as “a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time” (Le Guin 425). To achieve this level of exterior utopianism, the city of Omelas goes as far as locking a child “In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings . . . or perhaps in the cellar of one of the spacious private home” (Le Guin 426). Reading this causes the reader to wonder how far their own society would go to fill its desire to be perfect and whether obtaining this utopian exterior would cause the societies interior to become more dystopian, much like what happened in the city of Omelas.
This can also be seen in “Good Old Neon” as the story prompts the reader to raise a similar question: is it a societal norm to try and be seen as “perfect” or “the best” by others and strive for perfection?

In Wallace’s story, Neal states that he goes “from being someone who [is at Church] because he [wants] to wake up and stop being a fraud to being someone who [is too] anxious to impress the congregation with how devoted and active [he is] that [he volunteers] to help take the collection, and never [misses] one study group . . .” (Wallace 157). This is also shown through Neal’s previous love of baseball, and how by the age of fourteen, that love had “disappeared and turned into worrying about averages and if [he] could make All City again, or being so worried [he’d] screw up that [he did not] even like ironing the uniform anymore before the game because it gave [him] too much time to think” (Wallace 156). Reading about Neal’s anxiousness to impress others causes the reader to wonder whether it is a societal norm to try and be seen as “perfect” in their own society as well as causes them to wonder if society sets expectations individuals believe that they need to live up to. In Sparshott’s journal article “Truth in Fiction”, Sparshott states that “there is no other possible way to imagine a world than to manipulate one’s memories” (Sparshott 5). When reading fictional stories such as “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and “Good Old Neon”, in order to manipulate

one’s memories so that the reader can imagine a fictional world, the reader must first be able to see some aspects of this fictional world presented in their own world. This is seen in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and “Good Old Neon”, as the reader is able to see aspects of the fictional societies represented in their own society such as the societal norm of trying to be perceived as “perfect” or “the best” and society setting expectations for individuals to live up to.
Both Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and Wallace’s “Good Old Neon”, bring the reader to gain a realization that there is no such thing as truly perfect as there is often a price to pay for perfection. This realization causes the reader to ask themselves if a person or society can be perfect if they or someone else must suffer the price for this perfection. This is shown through both the societies and characters written about. In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, the narrator describes the city of Omelas and its inhabitants to be the epitome of perfect, with beautiful buildings, cheerful children, and a peaceful atmosphere. Later on, however, the narrator discloses that “their happiness, the beauty of the city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, all depend wholly on [a] child’s abominable misery” (Le Guin 427). While at first the city of Omelas appears to be perfect, in fact, this appeared perfection relies wholly on a child’s suffering, as in the city, that is the price to pay for perfection. Reading about the price this child pays for its society to seem perfect makes the reader wonder whether someone else is paying the price for parts of their own happiness.
This can also be seen in Wallace’s “Good Old Neon” as the reader is left wondering by the end of the story if the ways in which they currently obtain their happiness will later cause them to pay the price of their own happiness. While watching an episode of Cheers, Neal has realizations about himself and his fraudulence and why he continues to see Dr. Gustafson despite believing that he cannot actually help him. All of these realizations,
“[flash] through [Neal’s] head in the tiny interval it [takes him] to realize what [he is] watching and to remember who the characters of Frasier and Lilith even [are], meaning maybe half a second at most, and it more or less [destroys him], that’s the only way [he could] describe it, as if whatever hope of any way out of the trap [he had] made for [himself] had been blasted out of midair or laughed off the stage as if [he is] one of those stock comic characters who is always both the butt of the joke and the only person not to get the joke – and in sum, [he goes] to bed feeling fraudulent, befogged, hopeless and full of self-contempt as [he has] ever felt, and it [is] the next morning after that that [he wakes] up having decided [he is] going to kill [himself] and end the whole farce” (Wallace 169).
These realizations cause Neal to decide to kill himself and end his inescapable fraudulence forever. By Neal coming to this conclusion, he himself is paying the price for his own happiness and “perfection”. Reading about this, the reader thinks back on their own life decisions in an attempt to see whether certain outcomes of situations are in fact them paying the price for their own happiness. Both “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and “Good Old Neon” cause the reader to understand that there is no such thing as “perfect” as nothing can be truly perfect if they or someone else must pay a price. These stories also cause the reader to wonder whether the misfortune of ourselves or others pay for our fortune.
In conclusion, readers can find truths about themselves and their society through the fictional societies and characters written about in stories. F. E. Sparshott states in his article “Truth in Fiction”, that “what the author does, and invites us to do, is not to imagine a world de novo, but to suppose that the actual world that we know if modified in certain specific respects. It is only because we are able to suppose that everything not specified as being different is just as it is in the actual world that we are able to imagine worlds of such continuity that we are able to make sense of the tales told of them” (Sparshott 4). This can be seen in the stories “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin and “Good Old Neon” by David Foster Wallace as the fictional worlds written about are similar enough to our own world that they both cause the reader to ask themselves questions about their lives and society. While reading, the reader asks themselves questions such as how much they are like the characters they are reading about, how far they think their society would go to be seen a certain way, and whether a person or society can be perfect if they or someone else must suffer the price of this perfection.