In keeping with the best traditions of the Anglosphere, this celebrated short story is essentially a philosophical drive-by shooting aimed at Utopianism with Libertarianism, Utilitarianism, Girardism, and a whole mess of other morally vacuous isms taking strays. I'd particularly recommend listening to the reading on the Great Stories Podcast before you go any further.

The set up for the story is deceptively simple, with the author leaving enough room for the reader to pretty much fill in their own utopian structures:

Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?

They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians, I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. There were not less complex than us.

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? 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. O miracle!

But I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all.

But then she reveals the rot at the apple's core; the people of Omelas have--in some unspecified fashion--made a deal whereby in exchange for getting to "enjoy" this "perfect" society a child must bear unspeakable punishment on their behalf.:

Some of them understand why, and some do not, but 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.

At a certain age each citizen is presented with this awkward truth and the few who can not bear it lend the story its title: they walk away.

As the subtitle she gave the story indicates, Ms Le Guin said she borrowed the idea from an essay by William James, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life:

Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a sceptical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

Though, oddly enough, she did not give credit for this Tortured Child scenario to Dostoevsky, who originated it in Brothers Karamazov:

["Tell me yourself — I challenge you: let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, in order to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it? Tell me and don’t lie!”

'No I would not,' Alyosha said softly.

We sometimes here folks (including the podcasters) try to discuss this as a variant of the Trolley Problem, but must note that this is not a sudden choice in the midst of inevitable disaster, but requires a conscious decision to embrace an evil. Of course, our narrator in the story denies that the people of Omelas are even capable of recognizing the concept:

One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt.

But that begs the question of why some do in fact walk away.

For my money, the most important aspect of the story is that, contrary to the diatribe about the idea of the banality of evil, Omelas, like all Utopias, suggests the banality of good. Indeed, what does "good" (or evil) even mean if we are bereft of free will and the need to make choices? Let us not shy away here from driving this question to its logical conclusion: there is even something disturbingly imbecilic about pre-Lapsarian Man in the Garden of Eden. As God recognized, it was only when we obtained Knowledge of good and evil that we started to become like Him. As He discovered--to His surprise--on the Cross, it is guilt that makes us Man. "My Lord, My Lord, why hast thou forsaken Me" "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do." Thus, every Utopian project proceeds from a denial of our fundamental nature and is inherently misshapen and ugly.

(Reviewed:01-Nov-24)

Grade: (B+) Orrin C. Judd

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Ursula Le Guin Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Ursula K. Le Guin
    -AUTHOR SITE: https://www.ursulakleguin.com
    -PAPERS: Ursula K. Le Guin papers, circa 1930s-2018 (Archives West)
    -WIKIPEDIA: Wizard of Earthsea
    -DATA BASE: Wizard of Earthsea (Internet Speculative Fiction Database)
    -BOOK SITE: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (Penguin Random House)
    -STUDY GUIDE: A Wixard of Earthsea (GradeSaver)
    -STUDY GUIDE: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (LitCharts)
    -STUDY GUIDE: A Wizard of Earthsea (Course Hero)
    -ESSAY: A Whitewashed Earthsea: How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books. (URSULA K. LE GUIN, DEC 16, 2004, Slate)
    -EXCERPT: The Literary Prize for the Refusal of Literary Prizes: from No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matter (Ursula K. Le Guin December 6, 2017, Paris Review)
    -EXCERPT: The Lathe of Heaven: An excerpt from the first e-book edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction classic. (Slate)
    -EXCERPT: Warriors in the Mist: from A Wizard of Earthsea
    -VIDEO: Ursula K. Le Guin reads from "The Wizard of Earthsea" : Legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin reads from her book, "A Wizard of Earthsea," and answers audience questions. (Washington Center for the Performing Arts, Friday, October 10, 2008. Presented by Timberland Regional Library)
    -VIDEO: Ursula Le Guin at Portland Community College (Portland Community College, Jul 14, 2014)
    -INTERVIEW: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Art of Fiction No. 221 (Interviewed by John Wray, ISSUE 206, FALL 2013, Paris Review)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Ursula K. Le Guin Steers Her Craft Into A New Century (Scott Simon, August 29, 2015, NPR: Weekend Edition Saturday)
    -VIDEO: Ursula K. Le Guin on Creating the World of Earthsea: “Obviously, to me, words do make magic.” (Arwen Curry, September 27, 2023, LitHub)
    -SHORT STORY: “The Day Before the Revolution,” by Ursula K. Le Guin (LitHub)
    -INTERVIEW: Ursula Le Guin: ‘Wizardry is artistry’ (Hari Kunzru, 11/20/14, The Guardian)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Ursula LeGuin (Hosted by Michael Silverblatt Mar. 08, 2001, KCRW: Bookworm)
    -INTERVIEW: Chronicles of Earthsea : Ursula Le Guin's books include A Wizard of Earthsea, The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness and many others. This is an edited transcript of her online Q&A, in which she answered readers' questions about anarchism, utopias, Harry Potter, her favourite planets and the best Dr Who (The Guardian, 2/09/04)
    -VIDEO: Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin (American Masters, S33 Ep9 | Premiere date: Aug 2, 2019, PBS)
    -PODCAST: ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ Is a Sci-Fi Classic (Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, 4/30/21, Wired)
    -OBIT: Ursula K. Le Guin, Whose Novels Plucked Truth From High Fantasy, Dies At 88 (Colin Dwyer, 1/23/2018, NPR)
    -OBIT: Celebrated Oregon Author Ursula K. Le Guin Dies At 88 (April Baer, Jan. 23, 2018, Oregon Public Broadcasting)
    -OBIT: Ursula K Le Guin obituary: Science fiction and fantasy writer whose great books include The Left Hand of Darkness and A Wizard of Earthsea Ursula Le Guin in 1985. She increasingly became a representative of the genres of the fantastic, which she argued were of central literary importance in the 20th century. (John Clute, 24 Jan 2018, The Guardian)
    -OBIT: Ursula K. Le Guin, author of ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ and ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’, has died (Anthony Ha, January 23, 2018, Tech Crunch)
    -TRIBUTE: For Ursula K. Le Guin, the Future Was Always About Today: The acclaimed writer taught us how to think about tomorrow by contemplating the wonders of the present. (JACOB BROGAN, JAN 24, 2018, Slate)
    -TRIBUTE: Ursula K Le Guin, by Margaret Atwood: ‘One of the literary greats of the 20th century’: The author of The Handmaid’s Tale bids hail, farewell and thank you to the revered sci-fi and fantasy author, who has died aged 88 (Margaret Atwood, 24 Jan 2018, The Guardian)
    -TRIBUTE: Ursula K. Le Guin Tribute (Locus, April 20, 2018)
    -TRIBUTE: Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin (April Baer, June 8, 2018, OPB)
    -TRIBUTE: Never Tell Them Your True Name: Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin (Monica Uszerowicz, Jan 26, 2018, Bomb)
    -TRIBUTE: An Education Through Earthsea: Ursula Le Guin’s fiction explored the ultimate fantasy—of self-discovery and the power that comes with it. (Ryu Spaeth, February 6, 2018, New Republic)
    -TRIBUTE: Remembering Ursula Le Guin, the true wizard of Earthsea (Prospero, 1/25/18, The Economist)
    -TRIBUTE: Ursula Le Guin: What the atheist writer taught this Christian (Mark Woods, 24 January 2018, Christianity Today)
    -TRIBUTE: Kelly Link in Praise of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Genuine Magic: “It is striking how resonant Le Guin’s work remains even as the future she describes recedes into our past.” (Kelly Link, January 31, 2023, LitHub)
    -
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Looking for a Revolution: Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Dispossessed” at Fifty (Christopher Bigeelow, November 21, 2024, Chicago Review of Books)
    ESSAY: The Left Hand of Darkness showed us that the greatest romances in life can be friendships: Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 sci-fi tour de force can still teach us something about human connection. (Muizz Akhtar, Feb 13, 2022, Vox)
    -ESSAY: My Year of Reading Every Ursula K. Le Guin Novel: Susan DeFreitas on the Lessons of Le Guin During a Pandemic (Susan DeFreitas, January 19, 2022, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: On Coming to Ursula K. Le Guin in My Own Time: How Amal El-Mohtar Fell Completely in Love (Amal El-Mohtar, March 7, 2022, LitHub)
    -ESSAY:Zahia Rahmani on Discovering Ursula K. Le Guin in 2021: “We see her act of resistance.” (Zahia Rahmani, December 20, 2021, Lit Hub)
    -ESSAY: Building Earthsea: How Le Guin Laid a Shaky Foundation for Her World (Oren Ashkenazi, 9/19/20, Mythcreants)
    -ESSAY: David Mitchell on Earthsea – a rival to Tolkien and George RR Martin: In A Wizard of Earthsea, published in 1968, Ursula K Le Guin created one of literature’s most fully formed fantasy worlds. The author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks recalls how he fell under its spell (David Mitchell, 23 Oct 2015, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Shadow of Earthsea: Why her classic series ranks with Tolkien and Lewis (Mark Judge, 1/24/18, Splice Today)
    -ESSAY: How Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea Subverts Racism (But Not Sexism) (Gabrielle Bellot, Oct 30, 2018, Tor)
    -ESSAY: Ursula LeGuin's Magical World of Earthsea (Jan M. Griffin, spring 1996, Virginia Tech)
    -ESSAY: Changing The Container: How Le Guin Shaped Representation In Sci Fi (April Baer, June 9, 2018, Oregon Public Broadcasting)
    -BOOK LIST: Don't know where to start? The essential novels of Ursula K Le Guin: From the fantasy of Earthsea to ambisexual planets, these masterpieces offer brilliant introductions to a dazzling writer who broke entirely new ground (Alison Flood, 24 Jan 2018, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: 'Deeply weird and enjoyable': Ursula K Le Guin's electronica album: In the 1980s, the sci-fi author teamed up with musician Todd Barton, inventing new instruments and a language to create Music and Poetry of the Kesh. Is the album any good? (Geeta Dayal, 27 Mar 2018, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: From Master to Brother: Shifting the Balance of Authority in Ursula K. Le Guin's Farthest Shore and Tehanu (Len Hatfield, Children's Literature)
    -PROFILE: The magician: Thirty years before Harry Potter, Ursula Le Guin was writing novels about a school for wizards. As well as good and evil, her fantasy worlds also address issues of race and gender (Maya Jaggi, 17 Dec 2005, The Guradian)
    -PROFILE: The fantasy that inspired David Mitchell: A Wizard of Earthsea inspired David Mitchell to become a writer (Jake Kerridge, 11/17/15, Telegraph)
    -ESSAY: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Three Obstacles: What the science-fiction writer still has to overcome to be recognized as the titan she was. (LAURA MILLER, JAN 24, 2018, Slate)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: What Good Can Dreaming Do?: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven reminds us of the radical power of collective imagination. (Annie Howard, January 2022, Boston Review)
    -ESSAY: Ursula K. Le Guin Burns Down the National Book Awards: The local literary supernova brought the book world to its feet with an acceptance speech that censured Amazon and sparked an international frenzy. (Ramona DeNies, 11/20/2014, Portland Monthly)
    -ESSAY: Reinventing the Past: Gender in Ursula K. Le Guin's Tehanu and the Earthsea" Trilogy": A consideration of how the addition of a fourth book some years later does and does not change the implications of the whole series. (Perry Nodelman, 1/01/95, Zenodo)
    -ESSAY: Harry Potter and the boy wizard tradition: The parallels between Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea and JK Rowling’s creation are striking, part of a tradition of boy wizards in fantasy fiction dating back to CS Lewis (Ed Power, 7/31/16, Irish Times)
    -BOOK CLUB: Margaret Atwood Chooses ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’: Speculative-fiction wizard Margaret Atwood proposes Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ for the WSJ Book Club (Anna Russell, Oct. 16, 2014, WSJ)
    -PODCAST: Dreams and Shadows: On Ursula Le Guin's 'A Wizard of Earthsea' (Phil Ford & J.F. Martel, Episode 64 · January 22nd, 2020, Weird Studies)
    -DISSERTATION: quest for selfhood in Ursula Le Guin's "The Wizard of Earthsea" and "The Farthest Shore" (Jerry K. Durbeej, FAU))
    -ESSAY: Mind Over Magic: Repetition-Compulsion, PowerInstinct, and Apprehension in Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea (Phillip Snyder, The Catalyst)
    -BOOK CLUB SERIES: The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread (Sean Guynes, Tor)
    -ESSAY: Mapping the pop culture influence of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books: From 'Harry Potter' to 'Moana,' here's how the late author's fantasy series influenced your favorite art (Christian Holub, January 25, 2018, Entertainment Weekly)
    -ESSAY: Wizards as Hermits in Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle (Hermitary)
    -THESIS: The Subversion of the Classic: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Re-Vision of Gender in A Wizard of Earthsea (Martins, Opeoluwa, 2015, Haverford College)
    -ESSAY: 10 Reasons Why Le Guin's Earthsea Books Can Still Change Your Life (Charlie Jane Anders, 11/06/13, Gizmodo)
    -ESSAY: The Land of the Dead in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea (Laura Gibbs, Jul 1st, 2009, Journey to the Sea)
    -Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tao Te Ching: How the Sci-Fi Legend Created a Landmark Rendition of the Taoist Classic (1997) (Open Culture, March 3rd, 2021)
    -
    -
    -VIDEO ARECHIVES: Ursula K. Le Guin (You Tube)
    -ARCHIVES: Earthsea (Tor)
    -ARCHIVES: Ursula K Le Guin (Slate)
    -ARCHIVES: Ursula K Le Guin (The Guardian)
    -ARCHIVES: Ursula Guin (The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of The Books of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (Karen Haber, Locus)
    -REVIEW: of The Books of Earthsea (Andrew Liptak, The Verge)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin (Amanda Craig, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Matt Berman, Common Sense Media)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Sean Guynes, Tor)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Jim Wilbourne, Medium)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Mythgard)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Examined Worlds)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Juan Michael Porter, Electric Lit
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (MuggleNet)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (For the Novel Lovers)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (The Illustrated Page)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Jackie Tang, Readings)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (SFF Book Reviews)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Jennifer Hanson, Rambles)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Learning to Read Better Through Asking the Right Questions)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Skylis Reviews)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Floresiensis, Fantasy Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Adam Whitehead, Wertzone)
    -REVIEW: of A Wizard of Earthsea (Hedwig's World)
    -REVIEW: of The Tombs of Atuanby Ursula K. Le Guin (Sean Guynes, Tor)
    -REVIEW: of The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin (Sean Guynes, Tor)
    -REVIEW: of Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations edited by David Streitfeld and The Carrier Bag Theory Of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin (Colin Burrow, London Review of Books)

Book-related and General Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
    -ENTRY: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (Variations on a Theme by William James)" (Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography From 1516 to the Present)
    -ENTRY: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (Encyclopedia.com)
    -TRIBUTE: Farewell Ursula Le Guin – the One who walked away from Omelas (Christopher Benjamin Menadue, January 24, 2018, The Conversation)
    -TRIBUTE: Fellow writers remember Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929–2018 (Library of America, January 5, 2022)


    -TRIBUTE: Farewell, Ursula Le Guin, who taught us to walk away from Omelas: The popular science fiction and fantasy author leaves behind thought-provoking works that will be read for years to come. (Gael Cooper, Jan. 23, 2018, CNet)


    -ETEXT: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (Ursula K. Le Guin)
    -AUDIO: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin (The Great Stories Podcast, 15 December 2021)


    -PODCAST: Ursula Le Guin and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: The influential writer Usula Le Guin (1929-2018) discussed by Matthew Sweet and guests Una McCormack, Naomi Alderman, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, Sophie Scott Brown and Kevan Manwaring. (BBC Radio 3: Free Thinking, 11/16/23)
    -PODCAST: Ursula Le Guin and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (BBC Radio 3: Arts & ideas, 16 November 2023)
    -PODCAST: 0G78: Omelas and Distributive Justice (Philosophers in Space, 30 October 2019)
    -PODCAST: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Reflecting History, 7 February 2022)
    -PODCAST: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (The Mystery Hour, 26 March 2024)
    -PODCAST: Book Club: The Ones Who Yell at Omelas: In this month's edition of the Book Club, Karlo Yeager Rodríguez of Podside Picnic and Blood Knife editor Kurt Schiller join us to talk about Ursula LeGuin's famous short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and some of the responses it has generated. (Rite Gud, Feb 18, 2022)
    -PODCAST: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Cultured Swine, 23 March 2021)
    -PODCAST: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Books R Good, 31 January 2022)
    -PODCAST: Analysis Of 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' (Mere Mortals, 12 May 2021)
    -PODCAST: Utopia 4 Kidz: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (The Socialist Shelf, 22 December 2023)


    -VIDEO ARCHIVES: "the ones who walk away from omelas" (YouTube)
    -VIDEO READING: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K LeGuin (A Real Human Voice)
    -VIDEO: Ursula K. Leguin, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas | Happiness, Misery, and Choice (Gregory B. Sadler, Core Concepts in Philosophy)
    -
    -VIDEO: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin || SciFi World Building (Anna Bell Reads)


    -ESSAY: Still Walking Away from Omelas (Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, Feb 22, 2019, Rehumanize International)
    -ESSAY: Walking Away From Omelas: Connecting Ursula K. Le Guin’s Short Story to Our Current Political Climate (Margaret Kingsbury, Jul 31, 2023, Book Riot)
    -ESSAY: Ursula K. Le Guin, Fyodor Dovstoevsky, and the Snuggly Comfort of Evil (Charlie Jane Anders, July 24, 2015, Gizmodo)
    -ESSAY: The Morality of Creation: Dostoevsky and William James in Le Guin's "Omelas" (Shoshana Knapp, Winter 1985, The Journal of Narrative Technique)
    -ESSAY: William James's Lost Souls in Ursula Le Guin's Utopia (Linda Simon, April 2004, Philosophy and Literature)
    -ESSAY: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Jefferson Flanders, July 26, 2006)
    -ESSAY: Le Guin (and William James) on Sacrifice; on Political Aesthetics and Truthful Ideology (Digressions & Impressions, 5/18)
    -ESSAY: “VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY WILLIAM JAMES”: VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN THE WRITING OF URSULA K. LE GUIN (AMELIA Z. GREENE)
    -ESSAY: Walking off the Edge of the World: Sacrifice, Chance, and Dazzling Dissolution in the Book of Job and Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Alexander Keller Hirsch, 2006, Humanities)
    -ESSAY: A Philosophical Conversation Between Two Short Stories (james Wallace Harris, 4/11/20, Classics of Science Fiction)
    -ESSAY: Utopian Literature and Political Understanding: The Lasting Relevance of Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" (Adam S James)
    -ESSAY: ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’: A City Without Guilt: Ursula K. Le Guin’s imagined utopia has one terrible condition, and two responses that both ignore this evil. (Audie Thacker, Speculative Grace)
    -ESSAY: The Child in the Basement (David Brooks, Jan. 12, 2015, NY Times)
    -ESSAY: Philosophy and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Omelas (Joshua Ray Jongema, 3/26/21)
    -ESSAY: Living in Omelas – The Need for Truth and Reconciliation in America (Nike Irvin, Jay Coen Gilbert, Sharon Graci & Michael Allen, July 24, 2018, Aspen Institute)
    -ESSAY: ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’: A parable for Australia (Dashiell Moore, July 2010, Overland)
    -ESSAY: The Ones Who Can’t Walk Away: Another Perspective on Omelas (Kali Wallace, November 3, 2021, Reactor)
    -ESSAY: Ethics and Theory: Suffering Children in Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Le Guin (Laurie Langbauer, Spring 2008, ELH)
    -ESSAY: Reading The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin (milan's Home on the Internet, May 11, 2021)
    -ESSAY: The Tao Masters Who W ao Masters Who Walk Away From Omelas om Omelas: Sabina Schrynemakers, 2022, Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature)
    -ESSAY: Reflections: Those Who Walk Away from Omelas (AR DeClerck, Apr 9, 2022, Medium)
    -ESSAY: Omelas” and the Unbearable (C R E Mullins,February 7, 2024)
    -ESSAY: Perspective in the Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin (Nicole Holmen, 2010, Inquiries)
    -ESSAY: I Walk the Line: On Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (Randy Kaufman, with research assistance from Dustin Lowman, Grit with Grace)
    -ESSAY: Le Guin's "Omelas": Issues of Genre (W.A. Senior, Fall 2004, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts)
    -ESSAY: (Re)directing Literature to Justice: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Hawk Chang, June 2023, Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas)
    -ESSAY: Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”: Allegory of Privilege (plthomasEdD, October 30, 2011, Daily Kos)
    -ESSAY: A text wrestling analysis of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin (Tim Curtiss, Portland Community College, 2017)
    -ESSAY: 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' Analysis: Social Injustice as a Fee for Happiness (Catherine Sustana, August 02, 2024, Thought & Co.)
    -ESSAY: Relative Factual/Fictional Quality of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin (Erica Millman, 5/10/16, Fact v. Fiction)
    -ESSAY: Utopias and Nightmares: Stories of Omelas (C.S. Peterson, 6/05/20, Fiction Unbound)
    -ESSAY: Idea of Utopia as presented by Ursula K. Le Guin in her short story - those who walk away from omelas (Amrit Angural, November 2020)
    -ESSAY: The Denial of the World from an Impartial View (B.Contestabile, January 2016)
    -ESSAY: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin: An Analogy for Antinatalism (Sam Woolfe, June 15, 2020)
    -ESSAY: Reading with Scientists: Ursula Le Guin’s Omelas and the Dystopia of Big Data (Abigail Droge, November 26, 2018, What Every1 Says)
    -ESSAY: We asked AI what the moral solution is in "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (After Dinner Conversation, January 15, 2024)
    -ESSAY: Omelas, Je T’Aime: Le Guin’s timeless tale of cruelty and inaction poses a question that none of us can answer. But that hasn’t stopped people from trying. (Kurt Schiller, Blood Knife)
    -ETEXT: Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism (Elizabeth A. Povinelli)
    -ESSAY: Welcome to Omelas (Stephen J. Williams, 22 February 2016)
    -ESSAY: ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ (1973) by Ursula K. Le Guin: Time To Walk Away From Israel (Marc Barham, 10/23/24, Medium)
    -ESSAY: Thank you, Ursula le Guin (reading the Short Story, January 26, 2018)
    -ESSAY: Those are the Terms (Anna Fenton-Hathaway, Synapsis)
    -ESSAY: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (Martha Koester, 31 March 2010, A Moment to Say Thank You)
    -ESSAY: An overview of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Logan Hill, 2002, Short Stories for Students)
    -ESSAY: Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas”: Would You Walk Away? (Spencer Case, May 19, 2022, 1000-Word Philosophy)
    -ESSAY: Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole (Isabel J. Kim, February 2024, Clarkesworld)
    -ESSAY: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is Beautiful in Map Form (Chris Lough, November 19, 2015, Reactor)
    -ESSAY: Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” Defies Genre (Gabrielle Bellot, August 7, 2017, Reactor)
    -ESSAY: Where the Fiction of Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler Meets Jordan Peele’s Us (Joe George, April 11, 2019, reactor)
    -INTERVIEW: A True Utopia: An Interview With N. K. Jemisin (Abigail Bereola, December 3, 2018, Paris Review)
    -ESSAY: The Correlation Between ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’ by Ursula K. Le Guin and BTS’ Theory (Channel Korea, 1/12/2020)
    -ESSAY: The Dejection of a Confined Child: Conversations in Le Guin’s Omelas and Dostoevsky’s Karamazov-Rebellion (Hemalia Kusumadewi, Mar 4, 2024, Medium)


    -STUDY gUIDE: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Bartleby)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (eNotes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Cram)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Dr Oliver Tearle, Interesting Literature)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (SlideServe)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (gradeSaver)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Book Trigger Warnings)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (StudyCorgi)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (SparkNotes)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Mateusz Brodowicz, Aithor)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (IvyPanda)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (LitCharts)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Prime Study Guides)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Literary Theory and Criticism)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (123HelpMe)
    -STUDY GUIDE:The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (TV Tropes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Leaving Omelas: Questions of Faith and Understanding (Jerre Collins, eNotes)


    -STORY: The Ones Who Come Back to Heal (Cynthia Gómez, 17 July 2023, Strange Horizons)
    -STORY: The Ones Who Stay and Fight (N.K. Jemisin, Jan. 2020, Lightspeed)
    -STORY: A House by the Sea (P. H. Lee, Uncanny Magazine)


    -REVIEW: The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories (Gary K. Wolfe, Locus)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (The Mookes and the Gripes)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Sarah Wyman, Literary Ladies Guide)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Gerry Canavan)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Michael Potts)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Siri Paulson's Blog)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (the food and book life)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Marie the Third)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Hauwa Ahmadu, Terra Two)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Zilu Mou, ImaginAtlas)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Catsnake)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (The Feminist Bibliothecary)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (mist Ghost)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (ANZ LitLovers)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Marit van de Warenburg, Perpetrator Studies Network)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Reviews that Burn)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (A Personal Anthology)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Joanna Zhou, the pva creative writing review)
    -REVIEW: of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (The Sitting Bee)