Book Club

From Tor.com...

"Le Guin’s story imagines the fictional city of Omelas, which initially seems a utopia. But this city’s happy wonders come at a cost. In the bowels of the metropolis, there is a room in which a child is being tortured; the only way Omelas can remain a utopia is if the child suffers, and everyone in Omelas knows it. This is the city’s social contract. However, Le Guin writes, a few people, upon learning of the existence of the tortured child as teenagers, choose to abandon this superficially perfect world, seeking imperfection rather than a “perfection”—if it can be called that—predicated on another’s pain."

Bellot, G. (2017, Aug 7). Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" defies genre. Tor.com. https://www.tor.com/2017/08/07/ursula-le-guins-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas-defies-genre/

Note: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas can be purchased individually for Kindle on Amazon, or in any number of short story collections, including The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Le Guin. Another short story collection which includes The Ones Who Walk Away... can be found in the University Library eBook collection titled The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K Le Guin.