The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Rhetorical Analysis

In the story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin, Le Guin’s message is that a city can’t be perfect, every city has imperfections, and in order to be considered “perfect” a place needs some imperfections. The author communicates the messages by describing, in detail, the city and citizens of Omelas.

The narrator describes this beautiful and “perfect” city that is having a festival that everyone is happy in and having fun with whatever they’re doing. On page 19, Le Guin talks about the children as being happy, mature, and that they’re like adults but not miserable. “They were not naive and happy children- though their children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched.”

(Pg 19). The children were very happy the way they were living and how they were living their life. This connects to why the city and its citizens are so perfect because even the children are mature and contribute to the happiness of the city. Later on page 20, Le guin talks brings up this boy who plays a beautiful tune on his flute and how everyone stops to look and listen to the calming sounds. “A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd alone playing on the wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet, thin magic of the tune.” (Pg 20). By adding this part of the little boy playing the flute, it adds a feeling of serenity to the city. Not only that, the city is seen as even more delightful with a beautiful song being played just for the joy of it being played. The narrator makes the city seem all so perfect with its oh so perfect people living there.

Le guin then contradicts the “perfectness” of the city by bringing up this disabled child that everyone rags on and beats in order for them to feel good about themselves, in other words the city isn’t so perfect as it seems. On page 21, le Guin is making the reader rethink about how “perfect” this city really is with what she says next. “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.” (Pg 21). When Le Guin says this she wants her readers to feel that they should be contradicting the first part of the story that they read. This informations gives the readers a hint of the next thing they’re going to read. Later on in the story on the same page Le Guin finally tells what she was preparing her readers for. This is shown exactly on page 21 when Le Guin describes how dependent the city is of the this one little child’s misery. “They all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their 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, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.” (Pg 21). Everyone’s happiness and joy relies on this one child that is mentally ill and that is obviously not as developed as them. This piece of evidence tells the readers that this city isn’t so perfect after all and this ties exactly to how there’s no such thing as a perfect city or place in this world. The city of Omelas isn’t so beautiful if you actually think about where all this “beauty” comes from.

While the city isn’t perfect, neither are the citizens of Omelas.

Le guin tells us this when the people of Omelas see a disabled child. On page 21 Le Guin introduces it and that has mental disabilities and when the people see the child they beat it just to make them feel better and some never come close to it. “One of them may come and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in with frightened, disgusted eyes.” (Pg 21). This now makes the people of Omelas look bad and make them look cruel. Also they aren’t happy because of the “perfect” city they live in; they’re happy because they make themselves feel better by abusing this one helpless little child. However, the people of Omelas aren’t all that bad because they’re still human and still have feelings. On page 22, Le Guin shows us that the people actually aren’t heartless there, but they still don’t do much to help the child. “They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do.” (Pg 22). The people feel bad when they see the boy and want to help but if they do it wouldn’t do much good for the city. If they help the child then there’s no one there for the people to make themselves feel better. If they help it the beauty of Omelas goes down because there’s no one at the bottom to show the beauty of the city. While the city of Omelas isn’t perfect, neither are the people living

there.

In “The ones who walk away from Omelas” by Ursula Le guin, Le Guin’s message is that no city or person can be perfect without imperfection; in order to be a “perfect” place or person needs to have some imperfection. Le Guin shows us this when she describes the city and the citizens of Omelas.