![]() ![]() ![]() The child, it should be mentioned, is not completely hidden since the citizens are allowed to visit it. It appears just taken for granted that these are the terms, enforced, like other moral norms, by the “impersonal authority” of the norm, to use the phrasing of philosopher Elizabeth Anderson. The narrator suggests there is no clergy in Omelas to enforce these terms, and there is also no mention or hint of a deity who speaks directly to the people to lay down this law (even if a god did so, of course, that wouldn’t de facto make the law moral). ![]() Some of them understand why, and some do not, but 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. For this reason, Omelas can also be thought of as a dystopia or an almost utopia. In this story, the narrator describes the utopian city of Omelas, whose very utopianism, prosperity, and unspoiled happiness depend on the perpetual misery of a single child, hidden and locked away in a dark, squalid basement. Le Guin’s short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (1973) poses an interesting and thorny moral conundrum. ![]()
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