are happy, and their maturity is such that few laws, rules, and leaders are necessary. Technology is advanced, but they do not indulge in excess; they have only what they need. The joy extends to old and young, male and female. Everyone shares in it.

However, there is a dark side to Omelas. In a basement under one of the buildings of Omelas, in a room without windows and with just one locked door, lives a single lonely, abused child who "looks about six, but is actually nearly ten." This filthy, naked child continually experiences "fear, malnutrition, and neglect." Everyone in Omelas knows that this child exists, and they also know that

their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

According to Le Guin's description, the city is under some sort of spell. For the city's happiness and wealth to continue, the child must continue to live in misery. If it is brought up into the light and cleaned up, the city will fall into ruin. Most people, after they are told of it, eventually accept this horrible paradox and the joy that they are promised by the misery of the child. However, a few cannot accept the happiness that is only bought by the misery of another, and they walk away from the city, never to return.

The answer to this question calls for your personal opinion. Let's look at the options so that the choice will be clear in your mind. According to the first option, you would accept the child's torture as a price for your own happiness. You would have to continually live with the fact that the only reason you can be happy is because someone else is suffering.

If you choose the second option, you become one of "the ones who walk away from Omelas." You decide you would face the unknown outside the city rather than allow the torture of another human being to secure your own happiness. You have no idea what you will encounter out there, but whatever it is, your conscience is free of the incredible guilt of the compromise of Omelas.

In the third option, you take the child out of the basement, clean it up, and take it away to safety. Assuming that this would be possible and the child is not guarded, according to the story, the same day that you did this the city would be ruined. There are two main factors to keep in mind as you consider this alternative. First of all, the people of the city may have been living under a horrible evil delusion, and nothing may actually happen when you free the child. Alternatively, the city may actually be destroyed, but in fact it may deserve to be destroyed because its citizens only prosper because of someone else's torture.