40 Fun Facts About The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Ursula K. Le Guin found the name Omelas by reading a road sign for which city backwards?

Salem, Oregon spells the name in reverse once the state's O is kept, and she spotted the sign reflected in a mirror. She joked that ideas come from 'reading road signs backwards, naturally'.

Which K-pop group's 2017 music video for Spring Day shows a neon sign reading Omelas?

BTS built the Spring Day video around Le Guin's story and the film Snowpiercer, using both to explore death, the afterlife and closure.

Which ordinary objects, standing in a corner of the prison room, terrify the suffering child of Omelas?

The mops, a couple of them with stiff, foul-smelling heads, stand beside a rusty bucket. The child shuts both eyes but knows they are still standing there.

Under the terms of Omelas, what happens the day the child is brought into sunlight and comforted?

Every delight is destroyed in that same day and hour, along with all the prosperity and beauty of Omelas. Trading thousands of happy lives for one small mercy is the bargain each citizen weighs.

Which feeling is the one thing Le Guin's narrator knows for certain is absent from the city of Omelas?

Guilt is the single thing the narrator is sure Omelas lacks, which makes the later revelation sting. Freeing the child, the citizens reason, would only let that feeling inside the walls.

Which Dostoevsky novel had already posed the bargain of Omelas, happiness built on one tortured child?

The Brothers Karamazov has Ivan ask his brother Alyosha whether he would build human happiness on the torture of a single small creature. Le Guin admitted she had simply forgotten that Dostoevsky used the idea.

What does the narrator admit about the place where the ones who walk away from Omelas are heading?

It may not exist, the narrator concedes, calling the destination even less imaginable than the city of happiness. Yet the walkers 'seem to know where they are going'.

Which instrument does a child of nine or ten play at the edge of the Festival crowd in Omelas?

A wooden flute holds the boy so rapt that he never sees the people who stop to smile at him. The narrator later says his music depends on the other child, the one kept in the dark.

Which science fiction prize did The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas win for Best Short Story in 1974?

The Hugo went to Le Guin's story over a shortlist that included 'With Morning Comes Mistfall' by George R. R. Martin.

What does Le Guin's narrator call the dreamy, non-habit-forming drug that may perfume Omelas?

Drooz brings lightness and brilliance, then languor and visions of the universe's secrets. The narrator adds the drug after deciding that a city with none sounds puritanical.

What does the locked-away child of Omelas promise the silent visitors when begging to be let out?

'I will be good' goes unanswered, because nobody at the door ever speaks. The child once screamed for help at night but now mostly makes a faint whining sound.

In what manner does each of the ones who walk away from Omelas set out on the road?

Entirely alone is how each one goes, youth or girl, man or woman, walking straight out through the beautiful gates. None of them ever comes back.

How do young people of Omelas often go home after they have first been shown the child?

In tears or rage, sometimes a tearless one, the young brood over the paradox for weeks or years. Then most of them start to find reasons why nothing can be done.

Where in Omelas is the suffering child kept, behind one locked door and without a window?

In a cellar, beneath a fine public building or perhaps a spacious private home, sits a room about three paces long and two wide. The floor is damp dirt.

How do the citizens of Omelas eventually justify leaving the child locked away in misery?

Freedom would be wasted, they decide, on someone too degraded and too long afraid to enjoy release. The narrator calls this accepting 'the terrible justice of reality'.

Why does Le Guin's narrator turn from the bright Festival of Omelas to describe the hidden child?

To make the joy credible: the narrator asks 'Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No?' and only then reveals the child. Afterwards comes the challenge 'Now do you believe in them?'

What does Le Guin's narrator keep inviting the reader to do while describing the joys of Omelas?

Imagine the details freely is the standing offer: 'as your own fancy bids', the narrator says, 'for certainly I cannot suit you all'. Technology and temples alike are left to the reader's taste.

Which ethical theory, founded by Jeremy Bentham, is explored by the trade-off at the heart of Omelas?

Utilitarianism holds that the best action brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number, so thousands of joyful lives should outweigh one wretched one. The story asks who can live with that sum.

Which term, coined by Thomas More in 1516, names the sort of perfect society Omelas first appears to be?

Utopia literally translates as 'no place', a name More built from Greek roots for his imaginary island. Le Guin's narrator insists the people of Omelas are not 'bland utopians'.

The terms of Omelas are strict and absolute: what may never even be spoken to the suffering child?

A kind word is forbidden outright, so visitors fill the food bowl and water jug in silence and lock the door again. Cleaning or comforting the child would break the bargain.

The subtitle of Omelas calls the story variations on a theme by which American philosopher?

William James imagined millions kept happy on condition that one 'lost soul' at the far-off edge of things led a life of lonely torture. He called enjoying such a bargain hideous.

Which figure does Le Guin's narrator say readers of Omelas look for next, mounted on a splendid stallion?

The King never arrives, because Omelas has none. The citizens also get by without swords, slaves, the stock exchange and the secret police.

Which machines does Le Guin's narrator think are missing from the streets and skies of happy Omelas?

Cars and helicopters are ruled out, the narrator says, simply because the people are happy. Central heating, washing machines and even fuelless power are all allowed.

Which building does the narrator picture as the handsomest in Omelas, though plainer than the Farmers' Market?

The train station handles the very fast little trains and double-decked trams that bring visitors in from towns along the coast in the days before the Festival.

For those with more modest tastes, which drink does Le Guin's narrator think Omelas ought to have?

Beer is the narrator's suggestion for anyone who finds the city's visionary drug too much. Few citizens, the narrator adds, need that stronger stuff anyway.

How does Le Guin's narrator finish the four-word rule for worship in Omelas that begins 'Religion yes'?

Clergy no: the narrator decides Omelas is better off without manned temples. Soldiers are cut next, since joy built on slaughter 'will not do'.

What sounds from the pavilion beside the starting line just before the Festival race in Omelas begins?

A trumpet, 'imperious, melancholy, piercing', answers the moment the young musician lowers his hands. The horses rear, and their riders soothe them with whispers of 'my beauty, my hope'.

What fills the half-bowl of food that the child locked away in Omelas is given each day?

Corn meal and grease, half a bowl a day, leave the child so thin that the legs have no calves and the belly sticks out.

Besides sunlight, what does the child locked away in Omelas still remember from before the tool room?

A mother's voice and sunlight are all that remain of the time before, which is why the child still sometimes speaks to the people at the door.

Which quality does the narrator say the people of Omelas know because they know about the child?

Compassion, the narrator claims, is what the secret teaches them, and it is why they are so gentle with children. Their happiness is 'no vapid, irresponsible' thing.

Which term, from a Day of Atonement ritual in Leviticus, names the role of the child in Omelas?

Scapegoat first meant an animal sent into the wilderness carrying the sins of a whole people. Le Guin's twist is that her innocent stays locked up so that everyone else may flourish.

Which Star Trek series echoed Omelas in an episode where a child is wired into a machine on Majalis?

Strange New Worlds titled the episode 'Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach'. Captain Pike learns the planet stays a paradise only while a boy called the First Servant is sacrificed.

Which author answered Omelas with The Ones Who Stay and Fight, opening her 2018 story collection?

N. K. Jemisin set her reply in the city of Um-Helat. She told The Paris Review that 'you've got to fix it, especially when there's nowhere to walk away to'.

On which great water-meadow on the north side of Omelas do boys and girls exercise horses before the race?

The Green Fields are where every procession ends, among the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The horses there wear nothing but a halter without bit.

What does Le Guin's narrator call the snow-crowned summits that half encircle Omelas on her bay?

The Eighteen Peaks burn 'with white-gold fire' across miles of sunlit air on the first morning of summer, their snow still unmelted.

What does the narrator of Omelas call refusing to admit the banality of evil?

The treason of the artist, the narrator argues, grows from the habit of treating happiness as 'something rather stupid'. 'Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting', the passage mocks.

Which 1975 Le Guin collection, named after an A. E. Housman line, reprinted her story of Omelas?

The Wind's Twelve Quarters takes a phrase from A Shropshire Lad and gathers 17 previously published stories as a retrospective of her short fiction.

Which Le Guin story about the anarchist Odo follows one who walked away from Omelas?

The Day Before the Revolution won Nebula and Locus awards and sits right after Omelas in the same collection. Odo's teachings shape the anarchist moon society of The Dispossessed.

Which science fiction author edited New Dimensions 3, the 1973 anthology where Omelas first appeared?

Robert Silverberg opened the book with Le Guin's tale. The same volume held 'The Girl Who Was Plugged In', another award winner, among its eleven stories.

Which magazine ran Isabel J. Kim's 2024 Nebula-winning reply to Omelas, in which the child is killed?

Clarkesworld published 'Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole' in February 2024. It adds a third choice to staying or leaving, and also took Locus and BSFA awards.