Redeeming Omelas
Rev. Douglas Taylor
10-25-26
Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/nmmtLKy9vTM
Omelas? What’s an ‘Omelas’?
Omelas is the name of a fictional city in a short story written by Ursala Le Guin a little over fifty years ago. It won a Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1974, clocks in under 3,000 words, and is categorized as “Philosophical Fiction.” Le Guin has noted that The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (OH-meh-lahss) has “a long and happy career of being used by teachers to upset students and make them argue fiercely about morality.” (Here is a free pdf version of the story: https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf)
The story is about a summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas. After describing the joy and prosperity on display, the happiness evident at every turn; the narrator reveals one final element: the one atrocity. All of the utopian prosperity is dependent on the perpetual misery of one child.
Le Guin credits Dostoyevsky for the original idea which comes from a brief quote in his 1880 book The Brothers Karamazov. It was Dostoyevsky who outlined the utopian city with one suffering person at the center. Le Guin built her story to include the added component that every person, at a certain age, had it all explained to them. And that most of the citizens would even make a visit to the cell where the child is kept to witness for themselves. Thus, everyone is aware of the arrangement.
And it is described as an arrangement – although Le Guin is vague about the how this is accomplished or with whom the city has made such an arrangement. That part is not important to the deeper question. What we are drawn to the experience of the citizen upon learning of the arrangement. How would you respond to learning that your happiness depended on this one miserable child?
Le Guin explains that some people feel shocked, sicked, or disgusted when they learn of the atrocity, that a child is kept miserable so that the rest of the population may have prosperity and happiness. In learning about the arrangement, “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.” None are willing to sacrifice the happiness of everyone on the possibility of happiness for the one. ‘The needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few or the one.’
After that initial reaction, our narrator tells us, the young people go through a time of deep anger. They “go home in tears, or in tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced the terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years.” “Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it.” Most of the people, we are told, accept it. And then there are a handful who do not. Some people walk away; they remove themselves from the moral paradox and they become the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Of course, all of this is meant to prompt discussion among blossoming minds, questions about morality and justice, fairness and suffering. I was not given this story when I was in middle school. That is the common time when a story of this sort is put forward for young minds. I instead watched the short film adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” which also raises the similar moral question of sacrificing one for the continued ease of everyone else. And that is the point with which I wish to wrestle this morning. Rather than trying to grapple with the details, consider this moral question it poses to us still today:
Who is suffering that we might thrive?
I imagine over the decades, this question has had a variety of answers. Who does the miserable, tortured child of Omelas represent for us in our current society? Who is the one we sacrifice? Of course, one obvious point I would make in translating this into our current lives when asked: Who is the one we sacrifice? ‘Only one?’
We sacrifice thousands. We sacrifice dozens of children to school shootings every year now. https://everytownresearch.org/maps/gunfire-on-school-grounds/ The number of Trans people murdered in the US at least doubled in the past ten years, https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117016/documents/HMKP-118-JU00-20240321-SD011.pdf and hundreds of Trans people over this past year have died by suicide or other violence. https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports 1,500 women are killed annual through domestic violence and intimate partner violence in the United States alone. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499891/ They estimate that 3 million children die from hunger worldwide each year. https://wfpusa.org/news/10-facts-child-hunger/
Closer to home, we’ve seen the deaths of people on the margins here in Broome County – Peter Bennedum beaten to death last spring; and six people died in the Knights Inn fire at the end of June – three of whom were children. And I’ll add to this the suffering of all those detained by ICE over the past year who were housed at our Broome County jail and beyond.
There are so many humans we sacrifice, many swept under the rug and demonized to ease the conscience of the broader community. And were this a Faustian bargain, aren’t we supposed to be thriving as a result of all the sacrifice? Aren’t we supposed to be blessed in an idyllic utopia? Or is it only the exploiters, predators, and colonizers who prosper?
We have not only a multitude of people suffering, our society as a whole is not thriving as a result. The sales pitch to hate immigrants and trans people, Palestinians and those seeking the release of the unredacted Epstein Files, … that sales pitch from the fascists offering a beautiful society gleaming in toxic patriarchy and Christian Nationalism has lost some of its luster by the rising cost of food and gas I suppose. I will confess it is heartening to see reports that ‘government corruption’ matters a bit more to voters than the cost of gas as we go into the midterms. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/23/corruption-midterm-election-cnbc-poll-trump.html
In the story about Omelas, the only moral option seems to be to walk away. Many, in the story, (most, in fact,) settle into an uneasy rationalization in which they accept the atrocity against the one child and let it settle into the back of their minds. They then treat all others around them humanely, with kindness and care – especially children – because they are aware of the atrocity.
And for those for whom that bargain is not enough to allow them to sleep at night, there is the option to simply walk away. We do not have that option.
We cannot walk away from society. Oh, I know many of you have that little liberal fantasy of moving to Canada. And I suppose there are some who do. But you know Canada has troubles too. No. The solution is not “love it or leave it.” The solution is “love it and change it.” It always has been.
And Ursela Le Guin would say the same. She knew the solution she posed in her story was not a real one for our living. Le Guin was holding a mirror up to society, not merely a moral question for middle school minds. She also offered a witness to how we handle atrocities and suffering as a society. I think she wanted people to question the assumption that there had to be some suffering in the system for it to work well.
Does there need to be suffering for there to be good things and joy? Sit with this question for a moment. That there is suffering is certainly a reality, a fact. There are atrocities and traumas in our world, in our lives. And there is joy and beauty, love, agency, and happiness. They blend, yes. “Joy and woe are woven fine,” Blake tells us. But do we need suffering for joy to be manifest?
Maybe. That might be an assumption I’ve been holding, unexamined. I certainly recall my own evolution into emotional literacy as a young adult dealing with depression. I recall learning how to allow sadness and even depression into my life because I had grown emotionally flat. Allowing myself to experience grief and sadness allowed me to better experience love and happiness.
I am hesitant to assume my personal growth experience is the template for the whole world. But even still, let’s go with the argument that my experience translates to how society should be run – that suffering and joy are intertwined. Does that mean we must have our suffering? I think Le Guin is suggesting in her story that we are too enamored with the idea that someone most be suffering for society to thrive.
How are we to respond to the suffering among us? I don’t want to walk away from Omelas. But I don’t want to see the suffering in our city and accept it either. I want to make it better. I want to break with that bargain of ‘acceptable suffering’ and bring kindness and healing to all who suffer. I want women to walk freely in the evening without fear of being attacked or stalked, rather than learn better techniques to protect themselves. I want children to eat and grow and learn and cry and laugh without being bombed or starved. I want trans people to be welcomed as beloved instead of scapegoated by a fascist regime.
I want the kindness and care, the joy and prosperity that Le Guin describes in her story, that politicians promise in their stump speeches, that scripture proclaims is possible, that our values lead us to build together. I want it without the assumption that somewhere, out there hidden away from us, someone is suffering so we can thrive. No. I want the truth.
We don’t have to hurt each other. I want to know about the hurt. And I want us to be heartbroken by it instead of resigned to it. I want it to spur us to be better. I want us to want to change things. I want us to build something better. I believe we can.
In a world without end,
May it be so.
