Written as an allegory of slavery and how it affects the people who employ it, “Those Who Walk Away of Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin questions the way in which living in a society has a considerable impact on the desire to act in a way different from what one would do in an individual context. It is the story of a thriving utopian village where every citizen lives a life of happiness and freedom, except for one individual: a child who must be kept imprisoned and abused in order to maintain everyone's happiness. the others. For Henry David Thoreau, author of "Resistance to Civil Government" and "A Plea for Captain John Brown" and a strong proponent of individual morality and judgment, the citizens of Omelas are no different from Americans who continue to live in a society where slavery is legal, since they both inhabit a world where their happiness and success are based on abusive and immoral treatment of a sort of underclass. Furthermore, he would commend the people who chose to leave Omelas for resisting a malevolent state, but he would also ask them to do more than ignore the injustice taking place there. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayFor Thoreau, the only aspect in which the residents of Omelas would be considered “good” citizens is the fact that they follow their company's cruel instructions to their exact specifications. These are the “good” citizens of the Skhlarian type (see the philosophical works of Judith Skhlar), those who follow all the rules of their State regardless of their morality or their personal feelings towards them. In this type of person, “there is no free exercise of judgment or moral sense”; they have “put themselves on the level of wood, earth and stones, and wooden men can perhaps be made who will also serve this purpose” (Thoreau, “Resistance” 66). At some point, every citizen of Omelas is exposed to the village's horrible truth: that its entire prosperity depends on the misery of a single child. Their initial horror reflects a kind of innate human revulsion at seeing others suffer: no matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened by the sight. They feel a disgust to which they believed themselves superior. They feel anger, indignation and helplessness despite all explanations. They would like to do something for the child (Le Guin, 422). But these feelings of horror are quickly squeezed out of them by the corrupting influence of their civilization. Instead of seeing the blatant evil before them, they instead attempt to find justification for keeping a child in a state of misery and misery by emphasizing the necessity of his suffering for their prosperity. If he met the Omelasians and heard this argument, Thoreau would call it rubbish and denounce them for trying to alleviate their guilt by recognizing that what they are doing is wrong and doing nothing to solve the problem, as if simply you just have to be aware of the injustice. This idea – that the only step a people should take to ease their conscience is to “feel bad” about it – is exactly the same that he saw among his fellow Northerners and abolitionists and against which he raged saying: There are thousands of people who are in opinion opposed to slavery and war, but who, in reality, do nothing to put an end to it; who, considering themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit with their hands in thepockets and say they don't know what to do and do nothing (Thoreau, “Resistance” 69). For Thoreau, the innate lack of organizing drive that society generates in its members constitutes its greatest danger since society has the power to repress basic human morality and restrict people's willingness to take action against policies or policies. actions they do not like, for fear that “the remedy will be worse than the disease” (Thoreau, “Resistance” 73). Indeed, it is this fear of the consequences of what might happen -- "that their happiness, the beauty of their city... even the abundance of their harvests and the mildness of the weather of their sky depend entirely on the abominable misery of this child” - - that the citizens of Omelas are using an excuse to do nothing to remedy the situation. Thoreau would instead turn this argument on its head and assert that their reluctance to change is not linked to a threat of disaster that would befall them if the child were released; rather, it is a matter of the fact that the prosperity and happiness available to them have conditioned them to benefit from the functioning of their society and to feel comfortable with the functioning of their society: "the rich man... is always sold to the institution that makes him rich” (Thoreau, “Resistance” 77). He believes that there is a correlation between the wealth of a state and its morality: “in absolute terms, the more money there is, the less virtue there is; because money comes between a man and his objects” (Thoreau, “Resistance” 77). According to Thoreau, the people of Omelas are not good citizens because the evil of their civilization as a whole has imprinted itself on its individual members, eroding their basic human revulsion toward slavery and mistreatment and installing in its place places a love of material and society. wealth that makes them feel like their happiness is more valuable than the suffering of a child. Despite the repressive effect their lifestyle has had on their values, there are still individuals in Omelas who, when exposed to the truth of what their world is based on, make the decision to walk away. of their ideal small town: Sometimes one of the teenagers, girls or boys, who go to see the child does not go home to cry or get angry, in fact, does not go home at all. Also sometimes a much older man or woman stays silent for a day or two and then leaves the house. These people go out into the street and walk down the street alone. They continue walking and go straight out of the town of Omelas, passing through the beautiful gates. They continue walking through Omelas' farmland. Everyone goes alone, young or girl, man or woman (Le Guin, 422). They must leave because they suffer a kind of emotional pain from their association with such an immoral situation, which Thoreau likens to a "kind of bloodshed" that occurs "when the conscience is wounded" and through which “a man's true virility and immortality flow, and he bleeds to an eternal death” (Thoreau, “Resistance” 77). These are the few brave souls who, like Thoreau, “cannot recognize this organization as my government which is also the government of slaves” (Thoreau, “Resistance” 67). He would recognize as resistant those who leave Omelas for unknown places and would admire their methods similar to his own, because he considers withdrawal as a form of resistance to a way of life that is considered immoral: “it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and if he no longer thinks about it, not to practically give him his support” (Thoreau, “Resistance” 71). Those who leave Omelas do so because they simply cannot reconcile what they have seen with the way they are expected to live like everyone else.