“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants 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.”In case you need reminding that Le Guin is one of the very best of writers, a person of compassion and anger and intellectual rigor and elegant grace, a person of vision... read this story. It is barely 8...

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le GuinHugo Award-winning this short story gave interesting insights about life. In this story, the question for the reader author established is would you live in a place where happiness depends on the suffering of another one and obey the rules, or would you be unable to accept the rules. The writing style is interesting. A great short story for everyone to read and I'm certain that this short-story can compel anyone to think about the truth of t...

‘Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive’Would you accept happiness knowing fully well that it came at the cost of extreme suffering of another? What about 10 people being happy at the suffering of one other? How about an entire town? The late, great-to-which-nobody-else-can-equate Ursula K. Le Guin poses this question in her classic short story The One’s Who Walk Away from Omelas which follows an overvi...

I wanted to read this short story in memory of the author who died last week. I did not enjoy The Left Hand of Darkness as much as I wanted so I decided to try one of her most famous stories instead. It managed to reach me better than her larger prose. I do not want to say anything about the story, it is so short that you should ready it yourself. it raises some interesting questions. What would you allow to be sacrifice for you happiness. Is greater good more important than the life of an indiv...

They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there.This 1973 Hugo Award-winning fantasy short story is extremely short, and online, and this review will contain some spoilers, so if you haven't read this already, I strongly recommend that you take 5 or 10 minutes right now and do so here. I will wait. **Random trivia while we're waiting: Le Guin said that the name Omelas came

In this timeless moral fable, Ursula Le Guin tells the story of OMELAS ("Oh My Electronic Liberal Association of Socialists"), a group of internet activists who consider themselves the conscience of the United States. Posing as "the Resistance", they fight for apparently worthy causes like stopping refugee babies from being taken from their mothers, combating gun violence in schools, defending the Earth's fragile ecosystem from heartless multinationals, and preventing the US from becoming a Russ...

At different times in our lives, we are met with choices, important ones. Some idealistic or moralistic, others of practical nature. Still, the question du jour is: Will you walk away from Omelas when it's time to make that decision? Or are you going to have your orgies while the world goes to hell in a handbasket?Generally, I am not a fan of Ursula Le Guin but for this story I make an exception. There is some ephemeral quality about it, leading us to ponder whether mass exultation at the pr...

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is an unforgettable short story.This does not necessarily mean it is enjoyable, or even good, (although it is!) In this case it is a story which stays with the reader because it poses an ethical quandary - even a conundrum. It is the sort of moral problem to which you have a gut feeling, “Of course this is wrong; it is totally unacceptable in any civilised culture”. And then the doubts creep in. The Utilitarian doubts, where we consider our aim should be the gr...

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.“There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.”In “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin. Thank you, Ursula k. Le Guin, for encouraging me to celebrate my peculiarities. The short story about 'Omelas' is as insightful a demolition of utilitarianism I've ever read. Well, I didn't mean refutation, I meant demolish the...

6.0 stars. On my list of "All Time Favorite" short stories and is in the running to be number one. Not so much a story as a narrative description of a fictional town in which everyone lives in complete and total happiness at the expense of one child's abject misery and suffering. As powerful and as emotional a piece of writing as I have ever read in any genre. Find it and read it and I am sure you will agree. This one is amazing. Highest Possible Recommendation.

5 ⭐How can such a short piece have so much to say?! I listened to this half a dozen times and then read it before even considering trying to write a review. It has the eerie quality of staying with you long after you’ve closed the final page, of which there are only several. What I mean is that when you think you’re done with it, you’re not. Its piercing questions and moral implications reverberate through your unconscious mind, waiting for a quiet moment to slip into your consciousness and beck...

/Updated and extended after reread in 2020Synopsis: The seaside city Omelas is a blissful and heavenly utopia: people are happy, there is no violence, or terror, things are good, The Festival of Summer is running. But the easy living comes with a price: one single child is put away in a cellar, getting no attention at all, and lives a miserable life. Everyone in Omelas knows about this sacrifice, but if anybody would care for the child, the utopia would be destroyed by some unknown force. Most p...