The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
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"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" is a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin.
In the story, Omelas is a city of happiness and delight, whose inhabitants are intelligent, cultured and refined. Everything about Omelas is pleasing, except for the secret of its happiness: the good fortune of Omelas requires that an unfortunate child be kept in filth, darkness and misery.
The title describes the reaction of some of the city´s inhabitants to this state of affairs.
Ms. Le Guin hit upon the name of the town on seeing a road sign for Salem, Oregon, in a car mirror.
Le Guin later wrote: "The central idea of this psychomyth, the scapegoat, turns up in Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, and several people have asked me, rather suspiciously, why I gave the credit to William James. The fact is, I haven't been able to re-read Dostoyevsky, much as I loved him, since I was twenty-five, and I'd simply forgotten he used the idea. But when I met it in James's 'The Moral Philosoper and the Moral Life,' it was with a shock of recognition. .... [People ask me] 'Where do you get your ideas from, Ms. Le Guin?' From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?"
See also: scapegoat, problem of evil