Free Will and the Value of Happiness in Omelas

Lauren Shoemaker:  Welcome to Plugged In: A Women-Centered Science Fiction Book Club podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Shoemaker. In this semi-regular podcast series, we'll explore sub genres, tropes, history, and current trends of science fiction written by women. Today I'm accompanied by my friend Melanie to talk about Ursula K. Le Guin's 1973 short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Welcome, Mel. 

Melanie Bellavance: Hi, Lauren. 

Lauren: How are you? 

Melanie: I'm good. I'm excited to be here. 

Lauren: I'm excited to have you. Do you want to introduce yourself for the listeners? Who are you, what do you do? What's your expertise? 

Melanie: Yeah, so I am Melanie. I know Lauren because we are both in the Emerson Publishing Master's program. I don't have much expertise in science fiction, although I did get one of my undergraduate degrees in English literature, and I took a class on science fiction my sophomore year. I suppose being in graduate school for publishing gives me some knowledge about fiction as well as I work at a bookstore, and I read a lot. I do like science fiction. I don't read it as often as I should. I know nothing about science, but I know a lot about fiction, so I'd say that gives me some knowledge on the subject. 

Lauren: You're so humble. I think you should also mention that you're an avid fantasy reader. 

Melanie: Oh, yes. 

Lauren: Because fantasy and sci-fi are so closely related. 

Melanie: That's true. I do love fantasy. I do want to branch out. See, I read mostly romance fiction. I work at a romance bookstore, so I read that to know what I'm talking about at work. And there's not much romance science fiction. I feel like that genre kind of fell through after the big boom of dystopian fiction in the mid-tens. But I think it's coming back, and I do want to branch out more into the general fiction, science fiction, fantasy genre. And so maybe this will inspire me to start doing that. 

Lauren: Hopefully so. You’ll have to listen to all my episodes and read along.

Melanie: Yes, of course. 

Lauren: So, for today's topic, we read, like I just said, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Had you ever heard about this story or read it before, or did you know anything about Ursula K. Le Guin going into this?

Melanie: No. Well, I had heard of Ursula K. Le Guin. I don't believe I've read anything else by her. I hadn't read this story. I didn't really know much about it, which I thought was fun going in blind for this. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Melanie: I enjoyed the story. It was very interesting. I do love speculative short stories. 

Lauren: Yeah, me too.

Melanie: That I have no idea what's going on until I know everything. 

Lauren: So, for a little background, Ursula K. Le Guin is known as probably one of the most revolutionary science fiction and fantasy authors with countless books and short stories. Some of her most well-known works are The Left Hand of Darkness and A Wizard of Earthsea, which is from her Earthsea story cycle, as well as today's topic, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Le Guin won the 1973 Hugo Award for the best short fiction story, and that's really interesting to me because for our first episode of this series, we read the short story that won the 1974 Hugo Award for best short story. So, it's a little like tying a bow. Maybe this is something that I will continue throughout the rest of this series, but I didn't plan it that way. But I'm really pleasantly surprised to see that it ended up being like that. I first read this story in a short story class that I took my sophomore year fall. And it was not read in the context of science fiction. It was more so just read as the short story genre. And we were reading like a really, really large variety of genres within short stories, so I didn't think about it from that perspective yet. But then that following spring when I took a philosophy and literature course, the topic was science fiction, and we read this again, but this time from the context of science fiction. So, I think it's really interesting. I have a dual perspective on it. I think we should get into it. Mel, what did you think? I know you kind of said you already enjoyed it but give me a little more depth. 

Melanie: Yeah, I liked it. Five stars. I can definitely see, as I was reading it, I could tell that this was an award-winning piece.

Lauren: Oh yeah, definitely. 

Melanie: The writing was so visual. 

Lauren: You want to know what? This is really interesting. This being the third time I've read it, I've had plenty of time to picture the world in my head. And you've seen the Star Wars movies, right? 

Melanie: Many times. 

Lauren: Okay. That's what I thought 

Melanie: Many times.

Lauren: I can't remember which episode it is, but there's one where they're at this, there's an idyllic city and there's a bunch of horses and they set the horses free. You know what I'm talking about? 

Melanie: Yeah. 

Lauren: And the horses are underground and there's kids that are working there. Yeah, that's what I picture Omelas as.

Melanie: Okay. 

Lauren: Because they're talking about the horses in the story, doing the parade and whatnot. So, my mind just goes to horses and an idyllic looking city. 

Melanie: I was imagining just a field, a meadow with barely any buildings. Because I know that this was a utopia, so it has to be very nice and clean and idyllic.

Lauren: Right. 

Melanie: But in my mind, it was very barren. And I'm not sure if it was just because I was imagining solely what was described with the horses and the children and the decorations. But I was imagining a very, and maybe because it was that they are completely removed from the society that we know now. I was thinking very back in time and space before modern developments of the skyscrapers and anything that we would imagine now and we would think of utopia, not Coruscant in Star Wars where it's the giant metropolis of skyscrapers everywhere. I was thinking very much like Lord of the Rings, little hobbit homes. 

Lauren: It does feel very ancient to me, which kind of gets me into this point, that as I was rereading this, I am like, well, I think somebody could make an argument to say that this isn't science fiction at all. 

Melanie: Oh, for sure. 

Lauren: But I think on the other hand, you can absolutely also make the opposite argument that it is science fiction.

Melanie: Yeah. 

Lauren: There's a lot to do with science fiction and different, I would definitely say this is like in the dystopian sub-genre. And a lot of science fiction has a lot to do with government. 

Melanie: Yeah. And it's interesting because a point highlighted within this story is that there is no government.

Lauren: Right. And also, there's no religion. There's no cars. There's no helicopters. So, there's almost an absence of technology. But then she's also very specific saying that, well, there could also be technology. 

Melanie: It was very much.

Lauren: It's kind of like what you think.

Melanie: Yeah. It's what you would imagine as utopia. 

Lauren: It's ambiguous. And I think to me, maybe that's just because of all of the, I don't know, I also don't imagine it like the Star Wars utopia. 

Melanie: Like, yeah. I am thinking maybe because my own personal utopia is.

Lauren: Just a field. 

Melanie: Just a field. Just a hobbit home in the middle of a field with barely anybody around.

Lauren: You know what else I kind of also imagine it as? In Stardust, you know, that? It was a book by Neil Gaiman. 

Melanie: Oh. I never read it. 

Lauren: And it's also a film. I know. Sorry. I have to say something, Neil Gaiman is bad. Thumbs down. 

Melanie: I said I never read it, and I fist pumped as you could not see as this is auditory only 

Lauren: Thumbs down Neil Gaiman, just to be clear. But it's a great movie. 

Melanie: I believe you. 

Lauren: The book, not so much. I did not like it. But in the movie, they're in the city called Wall. Because there's a wall all around that. 

Melanie: Right? Of course, of course. Love that. 

Lauren: And all the people that live in Wall don't leave Wall. But the one guy sees the star fall out of the sky, super far away. So, he leaves Wall. 

Melanie: How did we consider him to be a literary master when he named a city wall? 

Lauren: At least I think that's the name of the city. But that's, I kind of imagine it like that too. I think it's really cool how ambiguous the setting of the story is.

Melanie: Oh, that's definitely intentional as I think Le Guin is just trying to say, imagine your own utopia. It's not possible. Utopia's not possible. It's not possible because there's science fiction. There's always going to be the little child in the cellar. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Melanie: Which was crazy. I did not expect that.

Lauren: No. You know, this made me think of something and I think it's kind of funny. So, when I read this for the second time in my philosophy class, we had to take a quiz on it, and one of the quiz questions was what was the child scared of. 

Melanie: The mops? 

Lauren: What I said, a broom. And I got the answer wrong because the correct answer, according to my professor was mops.

Melanie: So that's the same thing. 

Lauren: Yeah. And I was really frustrated about that. 

Melanie: At least half credit.

Lauren: At least half credit, but I got no credit for it. 

Melanie: That's frustrating. So that's why I never took a philosophy class. 

Lauren: No, it was a great class. I loved my professor. Dr. J if you're listening.

Melanie: Honestly, Lauren knows more about philosophy than any other person I've ever met, and I applaud her for that. I know nothing about philosophy. 

Lauren: You should meet a philosophy major. 

Melanie: I don't want to. Yeah, that sounds scary. 

Lauren: No shade to philosophy majors. I spent a lot of time with them in college.

Melanie: Were you a philosophy minor?

Lauren: I was. Yeah.

Melanie: You were the same thing. 

Lauren: Not exactly but, okay. This leads me to my big question that I think we'll be able to talk about for a long time. Would you walk away? 

Melanie: No. I'm going to be so real. No, I think it's. Okay. This is what I mainly, when I took notes on this story and I thought a lot about the ending and those who walk away. I think that from what it seems, they're walking away because their belief of their own utopia has been shattered, and they can't handle the guilt. But in walking away, they are doing nothing but trying to comfort their own sense of guilt. They're not saving the child, they're allowing the child to stay there and suffer for the sense of everybody else's utopia. So, they're not strong, they're not necessarily weak either. They're just doing nothing. And I think that's worse than staying. I think they are going to look for, because I believe the quote is, sorry, let me pull it up. I thought a lot about this. “The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness.” Because the city of happiness, Omelas, is a utopia, but it's not, because there is that element of the child in the cellar. And so, it is a city of happiness except for that. The people who leave are trying to find the city of happiness without the child in the cellar, which they will never find. 

Lauren: Because it doesn't exist. 

Melanie: It doesn't exist. So, they're leaving and they're just going to go walk into the mountains and probably die of exposure. 

Lauren: Yeah. Well, here's, so it's interesting that that's your read on it. I like that you're saying that what they're looking for is unimaginable because there is no utopia. A utopia is impossible. One way that it was read, I've read it before, and that my classmates and my professor had read it when I read it in college, was that this unimaginable taking it in the negative connotation where it's like outside of the city of Omelas, there's horrors. So, it's interesting and so maybe not they just die from exposure, but maybe they die from being killed, plague, famine. All the bad things.

Melanie: I think that it's, I don't know. Selfish in a way. 

Lauren: I think it is too.

Melanie: Because it seems like they know of the world outside of Omelas from my reading of it. They know that they have the best that there can possibly be and yet they are still trying to find something better. And they're not doing it because they want to be in a society where it's actually wholly good. They're doing it because they can't stomach the fact that there is a child in the cellar and they don't even help the child. They leave the child. And I'm curious about the magic bartering deal with the devil or whatever, that the city must have made in order for their happiness know to be contingent on the child being in a cellar. 

Lauren: What are the origins possible of Omelas? 

Melanie: Yeah, give me the backstory. 

Lauren: I don't know. 

Melanie: Why does it have to be a child? Maybe because that's what would garner the most sympathy and guilt 

Lauren: Probably. Definitely. 

Melanie: And how is the child chosen? It said they had a family and they remember it.

Lauren: Huh.

Melanie: It reminds me of, you know that story. Oh gosh. I read it in like seventh grade and I'm forgetting, I'm forgetting the title, but it's about. Okay, this, they're not on earth. They're on another planet where they only can see the sunlight. It stops raining or something once every seven years. And this girl who grew up on earth and she's homesick and none of these other children have seen the sun because they're little and they lock her in the closet so that she can't see the sun because they're bullying her. Have you ever read that? Now I'm forgetting the title. So, it just sounds like I'm, but it just punishing someone for your own sense of superiority. Now I need to figure out what this is. Hold on. Say what you were going to say. 

Lauren: I was just looking for a quote. Oh, here it is. 

“But as time goes on, they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom. A little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long, ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long, it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it and darkness for its eyes and its own excrement to sit in.” 

Melanie: And I think, no, I think that's an assumption that they make to make themselves feel better about keeping the child in the cellar.

Lauren: I think probably

Melanie: I'm not faulting the people for, I think, and I think the whole of the story is the scapegoat. The child is the scapegoat. I can't fault the people for keeping that child there, if thousands of other people and all of the other children get to live in this utopia and I guess make whatever excuses you have to make to feel good about it, to not feel like a horrible person. However, there's a child in the cellar. 

Lauren: Here's what I just thought of, and I kind of thought about it last night, but I, when I was rereading this, but I should have written it down, but I think the only way to bring the child out of confinement and to even make any kind of headway in reaching a regular normal life in any kind of way. They would need serious, serious therapy. 

Melanie: Oh, for sure. 

Lauren: Right, but here's what I think. You're in Omelas, so your city is, you have no problems. You have no problems. And to me that probably includes mental health and communication. You don't have communication issues. All the things that would require, that in our world, things that we seek therapy for. 

Melanie: That's a great point. 

Lauren: So, in this understanding, if everything is perfect, there's no problems, then there wouldn't be anyone to solve such problems. And so maybe the child would come out of confinement and literally would not be able to make changes. 

Melanie: No, that's a great point, because there would be, no one would know how to help the child. 

Lauren: There’s no infrastructure to help the child. 

Melanie: That is a great point. 

Lauren: If there's no doctors, how could they help the sores that the child?

Melanie: Yeah, so I guess the child's got to stay in the cellar.

Lauren: Yeah, that's good. Should that be the title of this episode? The child's got to stay in the cellar? That's really horrible. 

Melanie: The story I was talking about was “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury. 

Lauren: Oh, I love Ray Bradbury. 

Melanie: It’s set on Venus where it rains constantly except for a brief two-hour period every seven years when the sun appears.

Lauren: Ooh. 

Melanie: And there was a child who had grown up on Earth, but then her family moves to Venus, so she had known the sun. But all of the other little kids in her class had never seen the sun. And so, they lock her in a closet during those two years, so she doesn't get, or those two hours. So, she doesn't get to see it. And so, it's her suffering comes at the cost of their ignorance and it's pretty good. It's a good story. I read it for the first time when I was like twelve. But I don't know, this just made me think of it, because it's a science fiction story as well. 

Lauren: Ray Bradbury is a great short story writer. I want to talk about something that I think is kind of funny. And then I want to get into an argument of why I think this can be considered science fiction. The first thing that I think is funny. 

Melanie: Funny haha? 

Lauren: Yeah, funny haha. Like actually, so this is when there's the, you know, setting up the city of Omelas, describing it, it's your utopia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is the funny quote to me. “Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate.” Not only is that a great comedic interlude, but it is also what we were talking about, how this utopia is whatever you think it is. It's also such a great description because. Frankly, my utopia, I don't think would have an orgy. Would your utopia have an orgy? 

Melanie: I think we've already discussed my utopia as me alone in a field, so, no. 

Lauren: So, no. 

Melanie: When I read that I picked up on that. Not because I was like, that's funny. I was like, isn't that three lines before she was talking about the naked children and their horses. Now we're talking about an orgy. 

Lauren: Was she? 

Melanie: Well, it said, the children are naked, which I was like, why are they riding horses naked? That's so painful. 

Lauren: The nude priests.

Melanie: Wait, maybe I just read that incorrectly. Someone's naked, and then also they were talking about horses. 

Lauren: Well, there's, there's nude priests. “Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half an ecstasy.” 

Melanie: No, I found it. “All the processions wound towards the north side of the city were on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields, boys and girls naked in the bright air with mud stained feet and ankles and long life arms exercised their restive horses before the race.” And I was like, why are they, are they about to ride? Oh, I guess the horses are racing and they might not have people on them, but my thought was, why are they riding horses naked? That is so painful. And then they talked about an orgy and I was like, this is an odd town. But then it is an odd town. But also I was thinking of, this is going to sound stupid because obviously it's not real, but, Omelas isn't real, right? No. Not in the real world, but not even in the concept of the short fiction world. It's a person in the fictional world of this short story trying to describe a utopia to the people reading in this fictional world, and Omelas isn't even real in that. Does that make sense? 

Lauren: Kind of, yes. 

Melanie: Like obviously it's not a real place on this real earth in the year of our lord 2025. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's the year it is.

Melanie: Yeah. Well, nor was it real in 1973 when it was written. No, but I'm saying even in the fictional world of the author's mindscape. Yeah. It's not real.

Lauren: I think that makes sense. The way I see it is kind of like Plato's allegory of the cave. 

Melanie: Yeah. 

Lauren: How he's telling? Well, he, I don't know. Because that's not necessarily the exact same because Plato.

Melanie: No, I get. What you mean by that, by that reference. The people within think that it's real, even though the people without know that it's not. So interesting. See, I know that philosophy. 

Lauren: Yeah! Also, actually before, okay. I know I said I was going to get into something about my argument that this is science fiction, but I looked back and I found something that I put a question mark next to when I was reading this, because in describing the city, it says, “as they did without monarchy or slavery.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's the part I want to focus on. Slavery. There is slavery, but there is because the child is slave, the child is enslaved.

Melanie: Huh? Is the child? Well, I guess is the child considered a slave or a prisoner? But if you think about it. 

Lauren: I feel like they're essentially the same. 

Melanie: It's essentially the same thing, maybe slavery in the broad sense of more than one slave. If the child was considered a slave, but then again it was, so she's trying to describe a utopia and she's saying, there's no monarchy, there's no slavery. But then it continues and she's like, I can still tell that you don't believe me. So okay, let me add this one thing. Maybe this will make it more real to you. And then it's a stream of consciousness is kind of how I feel like it could be read. And then she's like, well, let's add this. And there's a child in the cellar, who just sits there. Is the child a slave? I guess it depends. This is crazy. The child's not doing anything except sitting there. There's no action. 

Lauren: But they do have an action. Their inaction is having an action. The action is creating a utopia.

Melanie: That's so true. The child is a slave. 

Lauren: The child is one hundred percent a slave. 

Melanie: And is it the same child? That's what I was trying to think. 

Lauren: For all eternity. Well, because they said this child is ten years old, so is Omelas only ten years? 

Melanie: Are they rotating through children? How do they pick a child? What happens when it's no longer a child? Well, it's already malnourished. It said it's barely got any calves and its stomach. 

Lauren: How is the child alive? 

Melanie: They give him a half a thing of corn meal or whatever during the day. 

Lauren: And grease. 

Melanie: And grease. Yeah. Gross. I guess they keep a child down there until he dies from malnutrition and then they kidnap another kid. How's the kid chosen? 

Lauren: But what about the interim? The interim between children. If the child dies and then it takes, it's going to take some amount of time to get the new child right? So in that interim time period where there is no. 

Melanie: Well, and also there's no government. Who's in charge? 

Lauren: Yeah. Who's in charge? 

Melanie: Who chooses the next child? Because I think maybe they just, if it's contingent on society as a whole believing that there's a child in the basement, maybe it doesn't matter if there's a period of time where the child is gone because most of society still believes that that child was down there.

Lauren: What if there actually isn't? 

Melanie: I was just about to say, what if there's no child? 

Lauren: What if there's no child? And their utopia is just based on the assumption that there is a child. 

Melanie: But they show the children the child, when, between the ages of eight and twelve, I think they said yeah.

Lauren: No, because sometimes adults go. 

Melanie: Yeah, so there's a child.

Lauren: So there, okay, so we've come to the assumption that there is in this fictional world. 

Melanie: There is a child in the cellar.

Lauren: There is a child in the cellar. 

Melanie: And there will always be a child in the cellar unless someone is kind to the child. And then Omelas falls apart.

Lauren: But is it kindness to the child? Well, yeah. Because they can't say a kind word. 

Melanie: They can't say a kind word to the child. 

Lauren: So they can't say like, you got this. Sorry. 

Melanie: Yeah, they have to kick the child or whatever when they give them it’s gruel. I want to know why. Who made this deal? There has to be a leader. They say that there's no government, but someone had to have made the decision to put the child in the cellar.

Lauren: Yeah. What if there's, well, no, because they said there's no, well, there is religion. There's religion, but there's no, there's no organized religion. 

Melanie: There's no organized religion. There's just belief.

Lauren: So what if there's a higher being.

Melanie: Like God told them to. 

Lauren: A god.

Melanie: God, lowercase G, not, yeah. 

Lauren: I was saying not necessarily like God in the Christian sense. 

Melanie: Yeah, god with a lowercase G is that god the child. The child is the only thing they believe in really in order to keep their society running. 

Lauren: Is this like a suffering like Jesus on the cross? 

Melanie: Jesus in the cellar?

Lauren: No. That's so bad.

Melanie: That's really bad. I mean, but yeah. The point of Christianity is that Jesus suffered in order for our sins to be forgiven. And so that child is suffering for all misery to be removed from Omelas. Yeah. The child is the Messiah. 

Lauren: The child is Jesus. The savior. Yeah. That's really interesting. I was not expecting you to come to that conclusion. I am always that conclusion I would, we're not done. This is not just done discussing. 

Melanie: I actually love analyzing literature with. 

Lauren: Christianity, with the Christian lens. 

Melanie: With a Christian lens. 

Lauren: It's fascinating because like at its core, the Bible is literature.

Melanie: Oh yeah. We had a class at William and Mary that was just called, the Bible is literature, and you just read the whole Bible and you analyzed it as a piece of fiction rather than

Lauren: That was me when I was in high school, in youth group. This is such a tangent, but when we would have to read passages of the Bible and talk about it, I'm like, well, this is just like being in school and reading text. I kept saying that I was going to get to. 

Melanie: And as always I go on a tangent.

Lauren: No, it's okay. I mean, I did too. I want to talk about, there are not many specific details about the city or the society that we get, but there is one that I think is interesting and it's called drooz. 

Melanie: I saw that, they're drugs.

Lauren: They're drugs. 

Melanie: Yeah. I saw that. I read the story. Of course I saw it. Yeah, I noticed that. 

Lauren: And I just wanted to point out that drugs are a big aspect of science fiction. Specifically, the cyberpunk subgenre. I'm not making the argument, let me be clear, I'm not making the argument that this is a cyberpunk.

Melanie: The child is an android, but that's how it doesn't die. 

Lauren: Oh my gosh. But I do think that the existence of substances is definitely a connection towards science fiction. I just want to read the part for our listeners so they can follow along for those who like it. 

“The faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and in most secrets of the universe, as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not habit forming.”

Melanie: Omelas loves an orgy. 

Lauren: They love an orgy. 

Melanie: So, it's like mushrooms or LSD. 

Lauren: Yeah. And they've created a non-addictive drug 

Melanie: Because of utopia. 

Lauren: Because it's a utopia. Because if you had people that had addictions. 

Melanie: It wouldn't be utopia.

Lauren: It wouldn't be utopia, and you couldn't have anyone. 

Melanie: So, it reminds me of how there's the theory that, so there was the oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece, and her prophecies were said to come from the blessing of Apollo. But in modern research, they think that there was actually just drugs, a gas leak, but something within Delphi that was not hallucinogenic, psych.

Lauren: Psychedelic?

Melanie: Psychedelic, yeah. And that made her have these visions and these speeches, and that made people believe them.

Lauren: Interesting. 

Melanie: And, and it was a fully natural substance that it was unintentional. So, it just reminds me of that, their belief and that this is what needs to be done for their utopia. Yeah. I wonder if it's not mass hysteria, but mass hallucination. Do you know what I mean? Like mass, just belief through, I guess God, it would be a religious thing. This other substance that they, is influencing. Does that make any sense? Does it make sense in my little brain? 

Lauren: No, it does. It kind of does make sense to me. Yeah. I would say so

Melanie: Just the drugs, what's the point in mentioning them if there isn't a, a big reason for them to be within this society influencing them? 

Lauren: Yeah. You know can they really influence? I guess I was thinking about this in the real world, drugs and alcohol and stuff tends, makes people make poor decisions. It reduces the decision-making faculties, but in Omelas there are no poor decisions.

Melanie: There are no poor decisions. 

Lauren: You can only, you must only be able to make good decisions. Do you think they can make good, do they have the choice to make? 

Melanie: Can they even make decisions? 

Lauren: Yeah, exactly. Because it gets into the concept of free will. Do people in Omelas have free will? 

Melanie: The ones who leave do.

Lauren: Exactly. But is that the only thing that they have the choice to do? Because if it's a utopia, then I would assume that there's no murder, right? Because that would be. 

Melanie: Well, except the child in the cellar who might die. 

Lauren: But that's, I guess that's ex exempt. I don't know. 

Melanie: That's the reason it’s not a utopia. 

Lauren: There must be no murder if it's a utopia. 

Melanie: That's true. 

Lauren: So, if there's no murder, do people not have the choice? If they can, do they even feel the emotions that would send someone to do murder? 

Melanie: I think that they could feel the emotions, but because everything is so perfect, there's no reason to. And so, it's there's the ability to, but they're not prompted to, 

Lauren: But so, let's say that, let's give a very concrete example. Let's say in Omelas there's a married couple. Let's say marriage exists in Omelas. Okay, because we don't know if it does.

Melanie: Well, this kid's got parents, he remembers. 

Lauren: Let's presume it exists. A man and a woman are married. The man meets some, is introduced to another woman and in a non-utopia, he would be interested romantically in this woman, and in a non-utopia, in our real world, he would be presented the choice, essentially stay with my wife or, you know, explore a new romantic connection.

Melanie: Yeah. Okay. 

Lauren: So, we just presume that in our real world, a man would have, a man in this situation could have two options. 

Melanie: A man would cheat. 

Lauren: Well, not saying that, I'm not saying that. So, okay. 

Melanie: But now I'm thinking.

Lauren: But if it's in a utopia, would he ever even have the opportunity to think of someone else as a romantic possibility?

Melanie: If there’s no government, there’s no legally binding marriage. 

Lauren: Okay, but what if they're like animals and they mate for life and there's an unspoken, they've made an unspoken, yeah. 

Melanie: Oh, I guess there's no infidelity if there's utopia, 

Lauren: But if there's no infidelity, if nobody has the decision, has the ability to make the choice of infidelity, is that an infringement upon free will? Do they have free will? 

Melanie: I don’t know. I don’t know. I think I'd like to say yes since I wouldn't. 

Lauren: So, they have free will, but they're just making morally good decisions? 

Melanie: Well, I think they do. I think because of the knowledge of the child and the cellar, I think that all of the people of Omelas are actively making the decisions to continue a utopia, because if they weren't, then the sacrifice, the sacrificial lamb of the child in the cellar would be meaningless, and then they would just have a child in the cellar for no reason. So, I think that the people of Omelas have to, they are actively making the choice to live utopian. 

Lauren: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a great word. 

Melanie: Thank you. You know what I mean? I think, they all make the decision to leave or to stay, and if they make the decision to stay, then they have to live their life knowing that there is a sacrifice being made for them to live this life. And so if they do not live this life in the way in which the sacrifice. 

Lauren: Yeah. Okay. But they're making these moral decisions because they are aware of this sacrifice because there's a child there. But is the knowledge of the child the only thing that's making. 

Melanie: In theory. 

Lauren: Because for me, the assumption is that the child, the act of the child being in the cellar, the act of the child being a slave has somehow made Omelas a perfect utopia. 

Melanie: Yes. 

Lauren: Not, not the fact, not the other way around. To me, there's something like cosmic involvement here. 

Melanie: Oh, absolutely. 

Lauren: And it's not that people are making the active decision. I am almost coming to like the argument that the people in Omelas don't have free will. That they are bound to some cosmic morality, but they don't really know, they don't even know the opposite. 

Melanie: But is it, it's just the way that it's been done for so long that they don't know any different.

Lauren: I don't think so. 

Melanie: I don't know because there must.

Lauren: Because we don't know how long Omelas has been around. The child's only ten years old and we don't know if there's been previous children. So, we can only assume that Omelas has existed for. 

Melanie: At least ten years. 

Lauren: No, at most. 

Melanie: Oh, at, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's what I meant. But then there must be an element of free will if they could make the decision to leave, to seek out a better place. 

Lauren: But I don't think they are seeking out a better place. I don't think that's why they're leaving. 

Melanie: I think it is. They're searching, so it's because Le Guin says “they leave Omelas, they walk ahead into 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.” And the entire thing is that she's trying to describe the city of happiness, but we can't imagine it without, we can imagine the city of happiness once there's an element of suffering within. And so, this place that they're seeking is a place that does not have that suffering, and that's why we can't imagine it. Because they leave, because of, they can't grapple with the guilt that they feel in knowing that their happiness comes at the cost of a child suffering. And so they're leaving to find the place where they can exist without that guilt. But that place does not exist. Because there's always going to be, there's never going to be a place where it's just pure happiness. Someone is always going to be suffering. At the cost of someone's happiness, I suppose. But then again, they could just be leaving to go die in a hole. I don't know. Because they're so guilty they can't continue living. And so the thing that we can't imagine is death, but because no people can imagine death. 

Lauren: One of the last things I wanted to ask you about and you specifically. Because this kind of ties to your personal expertise with the romance genre. 

Melanie: I'm an expert. 

Lauren: Yeah. But specifically in a genre. 

Melanie: Sorry, I just choked.

Lauren: But specifically in a genre that is so highly focused on happy endings, and quote, unquote good feelings. Le Guin kind of calls out our modern society. And in this a little bit, in describing Omelas, she writes, well, this is more so like comparing Omelas to our real world. She writes, 

“Yet I repeat that these were not simple folks, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. 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. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold. We can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” 

So I wanted to ask you what you think about that passage. 

Melanie: I actually, so for the listeners who did not hear me complain about this before we started, I highlighted a bunch of stuff and then it didn't save. I highlighted the beginning of that passage and it's gone now. But I do think, “the trouble is that we have a bad habit of considering happiness as something rather stupid.” This is my whole thing in my life. So, I read primarily romance books. I work at a romance bookstore. I am a huge advocate for the necessity of the romance genre majorly because, it is the largest genre, it's the most read, it's the most written genre, and it is also the most ridiculed genre, which I could have an entire podcast episode on the fact that the reason that romance is ridiculed so much as a genre is because it's primarily read by and written by women. And that there is an inherent internal misogyny and external misogyny and sexism that goes into the reason that people do not like romance because they do not like that it is a thing that brings women joy. And so, I think that if utopia is the belief that there is happiness, then I'm all for utopia. I'm all for keeping that kid in the cellar if people will finally believe that happiness is absolutely critical to the human experience and that walking around as a romantic era poet thinking that the reason that you have tuberculosis rather than poor people, is because you can conceptualize depression in a poem. Sorry. I have so many thoughts on this. That's a whole thing. People used to think before, it was generally called tuberculosis, it was called consumption, and they believed that it was an artist thing because artists and poets and rich people were able to, they had so much emotion that they were able to feel other, I'm getting so off topic, but the thing is, is that happiness as a defining factor of the romance genre, it cannot be a romance book if it does not have the happily ever after and happy for now, it has to end happy, and that's why I love romance so much. I love that there's the guaranteed happy ending because life does suck. Le Guin, as she says, there is this expectation encouraged by sophisticates, encouraged by those who are seen as leaders of the government or of literature or anything. To think that the only thing that is so deserving of our respect as a society is that that evokes the feeling of sadness. Why? Why can't we evoke feelings of joy and love and happiness? I don't know, man. Keep that kid in the cellar. 

Lauren: So, I have a question for you now to wrap this up. Do you think “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” has a happy ending? 

Melanie: No. This is not a romance. 

Lauren: No, I'm not saying it's a romance. 

Melanie: No, no, no, no. I'm saying it doesn't have a happy ending it. 

Lauren: Does it have a happy ending? For the majority of people who live in Omelas, they're living a good life. 

Melanie: They're living a good life, but the ending is not about the people of Omelas, it's the people who walk away. It's the ones who walk away from Omelas. 

Lauren: Do you think they're happy though, walking away, they're content with their decision?

Melanie: I think that they are content with their decision because they believe that they are going to find the better place, and yet they will never find the better place. And so perhaps, perhaps they're happy in the continued belief and the continued ignorance that they have, not ignorance in a bad way, just they are ignorant of the fact that there is no better world. And maybe they think that they will find that in death there is religion. Perhaps they think they're going to paradise. I don't think that it's a happy ending because they will never find that happiness. In the end, they will have a prolonged feeling of superiority and there is, they are just leaving behind a place that they know is not utopia, a place where they know that everyone is happy in a sense, but not entirely because they are hiding their guilt under a facade of happiness because it says no matter what they know that child's there and they feel bad and they make excuses, and that child is in the cellar no matter what. It's not happy, but that's, it's an allegory for our real world, which is not happy and there are happy endings within. There are the smaller, happy endings of the people running around with the horses and the people leaving Omelas, who for whatever moment think that they are making the right decision, making the right decision, and going to find their perfect place. But there is not as a whole a happy ending because there will always be the suffering of the child in the cellar, and the ignorance and the guilt. But that doesn't excuse, there are small, happy endings. 

Lauren: So then to me that sounds like you don't think Omelas is a utopia. 

Melanie: No, no. In fact, I do not think that Omelas is a utopia. I'd still live there. I wouldn't walk away. But I think that's because I come from a place in this real world where we deal with the guilt of life no matter what. So, if I were to show up to Omelas from Boston, Massachusetts. If I were to walk into Omelas, I'd be like, well, shit, this is pretty nice. This is pretty nice compared to Rat City. But those people don't know anything else. I know other things. I know else. 

Lauren: I had such a good time chatting with you about this. I feel like we could go on and on and on forever. 

Melanie: I certainly could. I love to talk. Yeah.

Lauren: I love to talk too. Thank you all for listening. I had a great episode. Next week’s episode will be “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, so make sure to read up. Subscribe on Spotify and follow along on Instagram at pluggedin.podcast. To access the transcript of this episode and all episodes, check out pluggedinpod.com.