The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas | Summary and Allegorical Significance in "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
In the following essay, Sobeloff provides a summary of the story's plot and examines its allegorical significance.
Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" was first published in 1973 in New Dimensions 3 and has been published in many anthologies since. When it appeared for the second time in 1975 as part of her short story collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Le Guin added a two-page preface in which she addresses her subtitle, "Variations on a Theme by William James," and its connection to the story's theme. Le Guin writes in this preface: "The central idea of this psycho myth, the scapegoat, turns up in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamozov, and several people have...
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