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The Narrator is the unnamed speaker who dictates the story, speaking directly to the reader. The narrator seems to be inventing Omelas as they write. Although never stated explicitly, the narrator does not try to hide the fact that they are describing a place that exists only in their imagination and the imaginations of their readers. Thus, the narrator does not know all the details of the fictitious city, only the one absolute: that the city is perfect in every way imaginable, save for the fact that its perfection and the happiness of its citizens depend on the suffering of one child. This condition is what makes the otherwise unrealistic, utopian city of Omelas realistic, according to the narrator. The narrator serves as a bridge between the world of Omelas and the world of the audience, first guiding the reader into the city, then guiding the reader to compare Omelas to their own moral universe.
The Narrator Quotes in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
The The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas Quotes
Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How to describe the citizens of Omelas? They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic.
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While the previous paragraph described the Festival of Summer in Omelas from an omniscient third-person perspective, here the narrator breaks from this all-knowing perspective to speak directly to the audience about the challenges of storytelling. The narrator writes in the manner of someone conveying the story of Omelas to a specific audience and uses the collective “we,” thereby identifying themself as a part of this audience. Both narrator and reader thus experience Omelas from a shared perspective: that of modern, human society. Not only does the narrator identify themself as a storyteller who shares a similar experience to their audience, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendi
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.
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The narrator continues to explain the difficulty of communicating with their audience—specifically, the difficulty of conveying a happy society to an audience that has been conditioned to consider “happiness as something rather stupid.” This section initially feels like a tangent, as the narrator strays from their description of Omelas to criticize a specific attitude present in human culture. However, the passage is crucial in reorienting the audience to consider the complexity of happiness. The narrator calls the artist’s “refusal to admit the banality of evil” a “treason”. Therefore, any reader who automatically writes off Omelas as boring because it is Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor aspe
I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive.
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The narrator reveals that happiness in Omelas exists according to “a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive.” In other words, happiness involves having the necessities while resisting the temptation of destructive objects and behaviors—perhaps because being responsible for destruction causes guilt, and guilt is corrosive of happiness. The principle behind this tripartite distinction underpins everything about life in Omelas. When the narrator says, “I think,” they reveal their uncertainty about the city’s specifics and, consequently, they reveal the city’s imaginary status. By eschewing any pretense to the reality of the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita de
Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt.
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Having laid down the rules of what’s allowed in Omelas, the narrator gives more and more examples of how this rule plays out. Even though nothing destructive is allowed, the narrator insists that Omelas is fun—it even has orgies! The narrator describes sex in Omelas, or, what sex would look like in a society with nothing destructive. Sex in Omelas is celebrated, warranting music and ringing of “the gongs.” Further, every child is “beloved and looked after by all.” Sex is not destructive, in part because it does not produce children who have no one to care for them because Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaq
A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world’s summer; this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life.
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After exploring what society in Omelas looks like (i.e., exploring what society would look like if nothing was destructive), the narrator describes what society in Omelas feels like. As a point of comparison, the narrator gives a well-known example of collective, societal happiness: a “magnanimous triumph” in war. However, as everything in Omelas is non-destructive, the narrator clarifies that the city’s joy is not felt “against some outer enemy but in communion” with one another. For the citizens of Omelas, then, it is enough just to celebrate their society existing “in communion.” Happiness in Omelas is not hedonistic. It is Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut venia
The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice, sometimes speaks. “I will be good,” it says. “Please let me out. I will be good!” They never answer.
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Now that the narrator has fully established what a truly happy society looks and feels like, they reveal the awful secret of Omelas: the child locked in the basement who suffers for the rest of the city’s happiness. While the entire description of the child’s living situation is awful, this passage highlights what is so truly awful about it (in turn, pointing to Le Guin’s conception of happiness). Even though the child is mentally underdeveloped from years of neglect, it understands the cruelty of its suffering because it remembers moments of happiness—for example, sunlight and its mother’s voice. The child Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptat
They all know that it has to be there […] they all understand 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 […] depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.
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The narrator reveals that everyone in Omelas knows about the wholly unjust situation that demands a child’s suffering for the rest of the city’s happiness, even if they don’t understand why this is the case. Just as the child’s memory of happiness allows it to understand its current suffering, the citizens’ knowledge of the child’s suffering allows them to understand their current happiness. Once again, Le Guin depicts the interrelated nature of happiness and suffering, and the necessity of understanding one to understand the other. Citizens understand that the price of their happiness, beauty, friendships, health, and wisdom, is the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at
“Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one; that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.”
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The reader first learns of the complex social order that revolves around the child’s existence by proxy of the Omelas children discovering the suffering child for the first time. Their instinctual desire (which is likely shared by readers) is to fix the situation, to find some way to change the child’s misery without damaging the rest of society’s happiness. In this passage, the narrator reiterates the rules of Omelas to pre-empt any thoughts of changing the child’s situation without destroying the happiness of Omelas: it is impossible. For no reason in particular, these are “the terms” of Omelas and they Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit e
Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it.
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Most of Omelas’s children react to the suffering child in the same way: first with disgust and anger, then with “tears” over the unjust situation that demands that they turn a blind eye to the child’s suffering. With time, the children learn to justify their inaction towards the child. There is no use for them to dwell in sadness over their inability to help the child, and narrator suggests that the real tragedy is not their personal inaction but the “terrible justice of reality” that forces them to make such a dreadful choice. In Omelas, this is how children come Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. No
They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist.
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Even though the citizens of Omelas are powerless to change the terms of the city (that one child must suffer to enable everyone else’s happiness), they do have the power to reject these terms entirely. But in rejecting the child’s suffering, one must reject the benefits associated with that suffering, too: being a part of Omelas society. To make this decision, one must leave the city of Omelas, alone, and never come back. The narrator does not know where these people go, as it is “even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness.” In this way, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea sus
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The Narrator Character Timeline in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
The timeline below shows where the character The Narrator appears in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
The narrator pauses to contemplate the difficulty of describing a city of happiness to an audience conditioned...
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The narrator clarifies the nature of the city’s happiness. The citizens of Omelas are happy, but not...
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Still, the narrator worries that Omelas may strike the reader as too perfect, too strictly adherent to rules...
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“I thought at first there were not drugs” in Omelas, the narrator writes, “but that is puritanical.” Thus, the narrator supposes, there is an ecstasy-inducing drug named...
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The narrator returns to the Festival of Summer. The parades of people have mostly reached the fields...
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...child, the child begs the people who visit it for release, promising to “be good.” The narrator reveals that the child used to scream and cry constantly, but after years of neglect,...
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...delight of Omelas” to “wither and be destroyed.” There is no way around this predicament. The narrator states that “the terms are strict and absolute,” though they never state why this is...
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...it takes weeks, for others, years, but eventually almost everyone comes to accept the predicament. The narrator runs through their reasoning: even if the child were released, it would not be able...
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...of the child’s misery allows them to more deeply understand and appreciate their own happiness. The narrator assures the audience that “Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness.” They understand that they are...
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The narrator pauses to ask the audience if they believe in Omelas now, after learning about the...
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...in total silence. These citizens walk into the darkness beyond Omelas and never come back. The narrator does not know where they go, for it is impossible to imagine—the place might not...
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