Dec 2, 2008

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas | Summary

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas'' opens as the celebration of the Festival of Summer is getting underway in the city of Omelas. There is an air of genuine excitement about the festival, with its flag-adorned boats, noisy running children, prancing horses, and "great joyous clanging of the bells."

The narrator, who never identifies him or herself, steps back from describing the scene to comment that, "Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions.... Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time."

However,...