Without a doubt, my favorite summer text was The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin. As I read it, I tried to imagine the perfect city that the author was describing, but towards the middle of the story the author shattered the image of perfection that I had created in my head. When she mentioned the poor child that was kept in the basement, I was intrigued by the fact that the citizens of Omelas truly believed that their happiness depended on the misery of that boy. I also found it very inhumane that although everybody knew that the boy was in there, and they even went to see him, they didn't do anything to help him. This aroused a strong feeling of impotence inside of me because the child didn't deserve to be in that situation.
It was a bit of a comfort that at least some of the people that went to see the child just couldn't deal with it, and to find out that, "They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go to is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness." The people who leave are trying to escape the unfairness of what the city is doing to the child. Still, instead of helping the child or taking him with them, they simply leave and think they are doing the right thing by not being part of it anymore. They leave towards a mysterious place that they hope won't involve the suffering of others.
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