The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
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40 free The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ursula K. Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is only a few pages long and has no hero and barely a plot. A narrator describes a radiant city on the day of its summer festival, then reveals the price of all that happiness and asks what you would do about it. Few short stories are assigned as often in English, ethics and philosophy classes, or debated as hotly afterwards. This quiz works through the story the way a reading check would: the sights and sounds of the festival, what the city has and what it does without, the child and the room, the terms of the bargain, how the citizens respond and how the story ends. It also covers what a class discusses next, including the philosophical ideas behind the tale, where Le Guin found the idea and the name, how the story was published and honored, and the writers, musicians and television shows that have answered it since. It is built for students revising before a test, teachers who want a ready-made multiple-choice check with an answer key, and Le Guin readers curious how closely they were paying attention. Every answer comes with a short explanation tied to the text.
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Q 01Ursula K. Le Guin found the name Omelas by reading a road sign for which city backwards?
Salem, Oregon
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'.
Q 02Which K-pop group's 2017 music video for Spring Day shows a neon sign reading Omelas?
BTS
BTS built the Spring Day video around Le Guin's story and the film Snowpiercer, using both to explore death, the afterlife and closure.
Q 03Which ordinary objects, standing in a corner of the prison room, terrify the suffering child of Omelas?
The mops
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.
Q 04Under the terms of Omelas, what happens the day the child is brought into sunlight and comforted?
Every delight is destroyed
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.
Q 05Which feeling is the one thing Le Guin's narrator knows for certain is absent from the city of Omelas?
Guilt
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.
Q 06Which Dostoevsky novel had already posed the bargain of Omelas, happiness built on one tortured child?
The Brothers Karamazov
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.
Q 07What does the narrator admit about the place where the ones who walk away from Omelas are heading?
It may not exist
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'.
Q 08Which instrument does a child of nine or ten play at the edge of the Festival crowd in Omelas?
A wooden flute
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.
Q 09Which science fiction prize did The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas win for Best Short Story in 1974?
The Hugo
The Hugo went to Le Guin's story over a shortlist that included 'With Morning Comes Mistfall' by George R. R. Martin.
Q 10What does Le Guin's narrator call the dreamy, non-habit-forming drug that may perfume Omelas?
Drooz
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.
Q 11What does the locked-away child of Omelas promise the silent visitors when begging to be let out?
I will be good
'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.
Q 12In what manner does each of the ones who walk away from Omelas set out on the road?
Entirely alone
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.
Q 13How do young people of Omelas often go home after they have first been shown the child?
In tears or rage
Q 21The subtitle of Omelas calls the story variations on a theme by which American philosopher?
William James
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.
Q 22Which figure does Le Guin's narrator say readers of Omelas look for next, mounted on a splendid stallion?
The King
The King never arrives, because Omelas has none. The citizens also get by without swords, slaves, the stock exchange and the secret police.
Q 23Which machines does Le Guin's narrator think are missing from the streets and skies of happy Omelas?
Cars and helicopters
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.
Q 14Where in Omelas is the suffering child kept, behind one locked door and without a window?
In a cellar
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.
Q 15How do the citizens of Omelas eventually justify leaving the child locked away in misery?
Freedom would be wasted
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'.
Q 16Why does Le Guin's narrator turn from the bright Festival of Omelas to describe the hidden child?
To make the joy credible
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?'
Q 17What does Le Guin's narrator keep inviting the reader to do while describing the joys of Omelas?
Imagine the details freely
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.
Q 18Which ethical theory, founded by Jeremy Bentham, is explored by the trade-off at the heart of Omelas?
Utilitarianism
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.
Q 19Which term, coined by Thomas More in 1516, names the sort of perfect society Omelas first appears to be?
Utopia
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'.
Q 20The terms of Omelas are strict and absolute: what may never even be spoken to the suffering child?
A kind word
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.
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.
Q 24Which building does the narrator picture as the handsomest in Omelas, though plainer than the Farmers' Market?
The train station
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.
Q 25For those with more modest tastes, which drink does Le Guin's narrator think Omelas ought to have?
Beer
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.
Q 26How does Le Guin's narrator finish the four-word rule for worship in Omelas that begins 'Religion yes'?
Clergy no
Clergy no: the narrator decides Omelas is better off without manned temples. Soldiers are cut next, since joy built on slaughter 'will not do'.
Q 27What sounds from the pavilion beside the starting line just before the Festival race in Omelas begins?
A trumpet
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'.
Q 28What fills the half-bowl of food that the child locked away in Omelas is given each day?
Corn meal and grease
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.
Q 29Besides sunlight, what does the child locked away in Omelas still remember from before the tool room?
A mother's voice
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.
Q 30Which quality does the narrator say the people of Omelas know because they know about the child?
Compassion
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.