He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.Īs if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet, thin magic of the tune. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute. An old woman, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young men wear her flowers in their shining hair. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around the starting line of the course. The faces of small children are amiably sticky in the benign grey beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. A marvellous smell of cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners.
Most of the procession have reached the Green Fields by now. Soon everybody reaches the fields and the festival starts. Even the horses are participating voluntarily, as the author is at pains to inform us that they are wearing halters without bits, and that “they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own”. All the people are marching towards the Green Fields at the north of the city, where a horse race is to take place.
The story starts with the description of the Festival of Summer, an extremely joyous occasion in this city of happiness. LeGuin is not sure, and she does not care, because happiness is the only thing she concentrates on – happiness without guilt. The people of Omelas may have laws they may have science and technology they may have drugs and liquor. We have almost lost hold we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. …The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. For according to the author, we have lost the ability to appreciate the beauty of happiness: It was not the bliss of naiveté and ignorance it was true unadulterated happiness of a “mature, intelligent and passionate people whose lives were not wretched”. LeGuin says that these were people as complex as us, with one significant difference: they were eternally joyful. The people were also not simple, the kind found in fantasy tales – “no dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians”. For there is no king, there is no slavery or servitude: they also got on without “the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb”. However, the author is at pains to ensure that this is not your standard fairy tale paradise. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. …Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. The time and place are not mentioned the author gives us freedom to imagine the when and the where: LeGuin was saying – and I also realised that I was not one of “those who walk away”: it was easier said than done.
#URSULA K LEGUIN THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS FULL#
However, the full depth of the themes discussed did not strike me until I read Aatujeevitham (“Goat Life”), an award-winning Malayalam novel by the author Benyamin. But this story literally took my breath away, all the more since I had not expected something of this calibre in a compilation of fantasy stories. LeGuin’s work: I was more of a fan of hard science fiction on the lines of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Until then, I was not very much cognizant with Ms. The story was part of a fantasy collection. Le Guin – might have been during my college years, or a few years later – but I remember the shock I got. I do not remember when I first read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. This is one of a series, hopefully to continue periodically. I have been thinking for a long time that I should put up reviews of short stories which have really impressed me.