Reading Through Fictions in Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (Variations on a Theme by William James)" Ursula Le Guin presents a utopia that turns out to be an imperfect, even nightmarish dystopia. The tension between these two heaven and hell extremes could be summed up in a pull between the verbs to seem and to be. A carefree life that seems right, pleasing, or otherwise justified turns out to be founded on injustice and is ultimately untenable for some of its citizens. Ethical confusion arises both within the fictional world of the story and in reconciling that textual space with the real world counterpart that the author evokes in her introduction. Le Guin considers the story an allegory of contemporary American culture inspired by the "shock of recognition" she experienced upon reading this passage from William James: