The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Rhetorical Analysis

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In the story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin, Le Guin’s message is that a city can’t be perfect, every city has imperfections, and in order to be considered “perfect” a place needs some imperfections. The author communicates the messages by describing, in detail, the city and citizens of Omelas. The narrator describes this beautiful and “perfect” city that is having a festival that everyone is happy in and having fun with whatever they’re doing. On page 19, Le Guin talks about the children as being happy, mature, and that they’re like adults but not miserable. “They were not naive and happy children- though their children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched.” …show more content…

Le guin tells us this when the people of Omelas see a disabled child. On page 21 Le Guin introduces it and that has mental disabilities and when the people see the child they beat it just to make them feel better and some never come close to it. “One of them may come and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in with frightened, disgusted eyes.” (Pg 21). This now makes the people of Omelas look bad and make them look cruel. Also they aren’t happy because of the “perfect” city they live in; they’re happy because they make themselves feel better by abusing this one helpless little child. However, the people of Omelas aren’t all that bad because they’re still human and still have feelings. On page 22, Le Guin shows us that the people actually aren’t heartless there, but they still don’t do much to help the child. “They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do.” (Pg 22). The people feel bad when they see the boy and want to help but if they do it wouldn’t do much good for the city. If they help the child then there’s no one there for the people to make themselves feel better. If they help it the beauty of Omelas goes down because there’s no one at the bottom to show the beauty of the city. While the city of Omelas isn’t perfect, neither are the people living

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