In this story, the miserable child on whom the happiness of everyone in the entire community of Omelas depends can be interpreted as a symbol of those who are exploited or forgotten by society: those disenfranchised people on whom others might build their success or their happiness. The child could symbolize, for example, workers who are not paid a living wage so that a CEO can make billions of dollars a year. The workers scrape to make ends meet, perhaps even working multiple jobs, while the CEO enjoys a life of luxury and ease. He might even tell himself that his workers are unintelligent or less hard-working than he, just as some citizens of Omelas tell themselves that the child is limited intellectually and couldn't really even enjoy life fully if it were brought up from the cellar. In this case, then, the locked and windowless cellar represents the conditions under which people who lack privilege must live and work and suffer so that others can be happy and successful.