Yet, because the “terms” of life in Omelas are that nobody can help the child without destroying the city’s happiness, the children are powerless to act on their moral intuitions, and they have only two options for handling their distress: repress the knowledge of their own complicity in the child’s suffering, or leave. Children learning of the suffering child become anguished and outraged, since its existence flies in the face of the perfect society they have known. The narrator describes how each of the city’s children must eventually learn about and grapple with the existence of the suffering child, just as the reader is presently doing. When the narrator reveals that the happiness of life in Omelas depends on the suffering of one child, however, the previously uncomplicated appearance of the perfect society fades away. “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,” the narrator writes “this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas.” Through these descriptions of happiness, LeGuin establishes the stakes of the moral quandary that will follow by allowing the reader to imagine a life for which they would give almost anything. Furthermore, the people of Omelas feel joy, but not at any enemy’s expense. The city of Omelas, for example, has no advertising, monarchy, slavery, nuclear weapons, war, guilt, or habit-forming drugs. In the first part of the story-before the existence of the suffering child is known- the narrator takes great pains to establish just how happy life in Omelas is. Rather, she creates an allegorical world that invites readers to consider the sacrifices that they as individuals make (or do not make) for the good of their own society-and to ask themselves whether the terms of the social contract are acceptable. LeGuin doesn’t take a clear moral position on which decision is right. If, however, they are overcome by feelings of guilt for the child’s suffering, their only choice it to reject the society of Omelas altogether by walking away from the city and seeking out their individual fate. If they are able to come to terms with the suffering of another individual in the name of the common good, they remain a part of Omelas. The story therefore presents a classic utilitarian problem: is it morally justifiable to inflict suffering on one person in the service of others’ happiness? In weighing this dilemma, each citizen decides their fate. Those who cannot come to terms with the child’s suffering leave the city alone on foot, their destination a mystery. The utopian city of Omelas relies on a social contract according to which each person must accept that their city’s happiness depends on the suffering of one child.
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