Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

After I read this short story for the first time, I had to take a break before I came back to it. I walked away from it kind of baffled and unsure what to think of it. So then I came back and reread it again and again, and I still don't really understand what LeGuin is saying. "Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions." After I read this, I thought, "I'm not even sure what to assume." I was pretty lost.

This could be way off, but it's the big picture of what I gleaned from this story. I feel like Omelas, and the people, and the child are all a representative of something. The first thing I thought of was that Omelas is a place of our own imagination, a perfect world that we would want to live in and make it however we desire. Like the line says, "As you like it." But as I read through it again, I thought that Omelas was representing America, and where the child was would be Africa. The child could be a representative of the starving children there. And we Americans, sometimes go on missions trips and other things to try and help them, but our impact is only on a small scale. Some are touched to where they just cry while others are more angry and frustrated with how they are forced to live, so cut off from the rest of the world in their own place. Yet others maybe feel called to reach these people. That is why they leave America. They may become missionaries and go to other countries to help those in need. In America, we are so blessed beyond belief. We want to keep our "happiness" and not sacrifice anything else to have the things that we want. But if we do go and see the "child" and we are touched, we feel guilty, but don't want to feel guilty for having all the things that we do have.

Also, there were many lines that I liked and didn't fully understand. Like this passage, "Their tears at the bitter injustice dry... the true source of the splendor of their lives... They know compassion." I think that part of this is saying that those who have seen the child in the room, they become aware that they do not have true freedom and don't take for granted the happiness they have. They have an understanding of the hurting and feel something inside that knows the injustice this child faces.

This thought provoking story has left me quite bewildered. Again, who knows if any of this is right, but it was my interpretation and what spoke to me when I read this piece.

As a last note, when LeGuin mentions that "each one goes alone," I think it could mean we all have to make our own personal decisions of what we are going to do and how we are going to live.
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