When I was a child just starting to realise the terrible unfairness of the world, my parents taught me that the only acceptable answer to 'are we allowed to sacrifice a child to save the world?' is 'yes - provided I am that child'. What they meant is that you are never, ever, allowed to make the choice for someone else to suffer - if you think that level of suffering is acceptable, YOU should be the one to bear it. That lesson came to mind when I first read Le Guin's story - door number four is to let out the child, and to take its place in the cellar. If only there was a clear equivalent to this in our world.

I wrote to Ursula K. LeGuin when I was in high school, specifically in reference to this story, and SHE WROTE ME BACK! 🥰

This story makes me think about factory farming, fast fashion sweatshops, rare earth mining, and other invisible-to-us suffering that make our current lives possible.

"No one of us is free until we are all free." I have to believe that

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice." -MLK

For what it's worth, LeGuin's answer to "who are the ones that walk away from Omelas" was "The Day Before the Revolution", a short story about Odo, the founder of the ambiguous utopia found in "The Dispossessed". Those who walk away are the ones that look at Omelas, at the idea that suffering is necessary for greatness, and see it for the nonsense that it is.

This story is interesting because of one key difference between Omelas and our world: while rescuing the child from the cellar would destroy the prosperity of Omelas and put the lives of its citizens in danger, the same is not true for reality. While we may cease to enjoy some of the comforts and luxuries that we have been accustomed to, if our society's metaphorical child is rescued, we will still live on. We don't sacrifice nearly as much when we rescue the child as we do when we stay complicit in its suffering. It's like if the trolley problem was between a track with five people and an empty track, but pulling the lever to divert the train onto the empty track would mean that billionaires would have to give up some of their obscene amount of wealth.

I think the difference with the obviously sterile trolley problem and Omelas is that the trolley problem implies that whoever you hit will die. While Omelas has the person being abused and tortured. So her story actually makes it worse.

Yesss! Ursula K LeGuin is the entire reason I went from a kid who couldn't care less about books into a young adult/adult who is passionate about reading... I found one of her books in the school library in 4th grade and it felt like it changed my entire brain. I'm so happy to see you discussing her!!

There is a fourth possibility. A child who sees the sacrificed child--lets the child out and takes their place. And then, another does the same. Another and another--sharing the sacrifice. Not leaving the child until it dies alone, cold, starved and and in darkness. Sharing the burden.

Le Guin was a Communist in a time and place when it REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY wasn't safe to be a Communist. I highly doubt she'd take the deontological approach of throwing five other people into the tool room. The only right answer is to take the kid with you and let people figure out their own happiness. Remember, it'ss magic that keeps this place going. It even says the very WEATHER depends on the child's suffering. If this is magic, we need to thrust people into reality.

Isabel J Kim wrote a great short story that explored a fourth (dark) option: "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole". She also does a great job bringing in how outsiders view Omelas and how social media plays into things.

I can't be alone in reading a somewhat darker analogy in the story - to me "walking away from Omelas" is a euphemism for su*cide. The ethical dilemma thus becomes more akin to seeing the trolly approaching a person and throwing yourself in front of it in hopes that it will stop. Or, more troublingly (realistically?) throwing yourself in front of a trolley because you can no longer tolerate living in a continuous thought experiment where people are constantly being set up to be run over by trollies. In a powerful and tragic way, people like Aaron Bushnell are The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.

I read this story my freshman year of high school. At the time, the conclusion that myself and my class came to was that "walking away" was representative of death or ending one's own life. We reasoned that the ones who walked away were unable to make the choice of remaining complicit or taking action and destroying society as they knew it. Either way their guilt was too much for them to manage, so rather than destroying the utopian society or continuing to destroy the child they make the choice to destroy themselves. (I would also like to note that we read this story during our unit on Frankenstein so the ideas of guilt, and by association the destruction of what cause that guilt, was definitely in the foreground of our minds.) Although, I no longer fully subscribe to this interpretation of the text I still find it an interesting point to consider. I also remember bringing up the trolly problem during our socratic seminar, so it is nice to see my connection validated. Thank you for this video, this story has remained one of my favorites and I still think about it often!

How they describe the child as disabled makes me wonder what they do to the "undesirables" (a term throughout history to describe mainly disabled people as they were sadly consider to be undesirable to the city). Do they just throw them outside the city and plan to grab one of them once they need a new child? I have a theory that "those who walk away from Omalas" (to the mountains) are going to a smaller, less utopian city to take care of those who were abandoned due to being considered undesirables (like the child). Edit: Punctuation

When I first read Omelas in college, I thought it framed my home situation well: I was the child in the basement so the rest of the people in the house had a person to dump all their miseries on. Omelas is a picture of a world on a macro and micro level.

I just recently read a once upon a time fanfiction on ao3 based on this story in which the child in the story is recued and the consequences and fallout of that. The thing I took away from that story was what a huge world altering change one person can make when they refuse to walk away from the problem. One person, and one action of kindness can mean so much and save the lives of more than one person. It really made me think deeply about child abuse and domestic violence and sexism in society and how we need to stick up for each other, for real people in our daily lives, even if its uncomfortable and we would be ostracised. It reminded me of that clip from the tv show why women kill s1 when she says i hate people who look away. Affecting real change in the world starts at home and starts in your own neighbourhood. dont look away. dont walk away from omelas.

I love this story and think about it often. There are so many interpretations and possibilities of what it could be communicating. Two I think are valuable to consider actually go against the idea of this being a trolley problem at all. One, why don't we believe this in the existence of this society until the pitious child is revealed? Why do we believe goodness only exists in opposition to evil? Two, who says the child must suffer for the utopian society to remain? Why do we believe them?

I watch a lot of long form KZfaq and I rarely ever comment. I got your video recommended to me and it finally sparked me to go read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas before coming back to your video. First of all: incredible job, immediately had me subscribing. Second, the story and its painting of the misery of one child in exchange for the joy of thousands of others immediately made me think of Palestine, which you also pointed out in the video. The past nine months has opened my eyes to the sheer atrocities of the world I had previously (shamefully) turned a blind eye to. It’s not that I wasn’t aware of them before, but rather that I had chosen to look away in exchange for my quiet, privileged life. I really enjoyed how thought-provoking both the story and your analysis of it was. I feel like, at least in my life, the genocide happening in Gaza has opened the eyes of a lot more people my age and it has people enraged in a way I’ve never seen before. The injustice and otherworldliness of watching children and babies die at the hands of genocidal monsters is something that cannot be unseen. Thank you for your well made video; I hope you’ll continue to make pieces like this.

I hadn't considered the story as a discussion on the trolley problem, but I can see now how it fits. For me, my initial take away from this story was that despite the reader likely being disgusted by the prospect of the child in the basement presented by the narrator, they are not satisfied or perhaps convinced that a utopia could exist without there being some price to pay. In the same way that the people of Omelas believe that the foundation of their societial prosperity exists because of the suffering of the child, perhaps Le Guin is challenging the reader to contemplate for what systems of abuse are they complicit. Although they are willing to make a personal action, do those that walk away really believe that the Omelas' societal system should or could be disestablished? I don't know. Whatever the interpretation, this disquieting story from Le Guin certainly sticks around in my brain asking for some rumination.

So this story made me wonder if it would be possible to substitute a volunteer to take the child’s place. The substitute would have to be an adult in order to give informed consent, because it strikes me that the true horror of the child abuse is that the child cannot consent to its suffering.

I'M SO HYPED FOR THIS DISCUSSION!!

I don't know how to adequately express my appreciation and enthusiasm for your videos. Please know you have a new fan ❤

Mental health nurse here, children are treated this way in real life. My solution is to take care of the survivors and hope that individuals will become kinder.

the transition at 12:07 goes soooooooo hard

I think your mention of the Palestinians is apt. The best real-world demonstration of the dynamic in the story is the displacement and emiseration of the Palestinians for the purpose of creating an advanced and wealthy Israeli ethnostate.

Watched this video earlier today, and haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I'm simply haunted by the implications and imagery of this story. I'm left with this feeling of helplessness - the people of Omelas were each given a choice to continue or end the child's suffering in order to maintain the status quo. How many children suffer now that I won't even be given the choice to save?

I read TOWWAFO in a collection of short stories that led each story with an interesting blurb about the author. LeGuin was asked how she comes up with her ideas. She answered that she was driving to Salem, Oregon and shortened it to Salem O and then reversed it for Omelas. That always stuck with me - but the story has haunted me for decades.

A book channel talking about GOOD books and in-depth, with an eye to analysis? FINALLY KZfaq GIVES ME THE BOOK CONTENT I WANT INSTEAD OF HALF-REVIEWS OF SMUTTY SLASHFICS!

Timely and shattering

Thank you as I've never seen the story as an exploration of the trolley problem. So thanks for that. Because I've always seen it as an example of the bystander effect. Everyone knows and is horrified but none is willing to do anything themselves - they are in effect waiting for someone else to step up and present a workable solution. I say that for those who remove themselves from the equation. They are all waiting for a saviour for their problem. For someone to go. 'This is how we stop torturing the child and none of you have to give anything or very little up'. Why? Because everyone knows and they aren't storming the cellar to free the child or willingly taking its place. Better not to try at all (even if you decide you individually benefit from the situation) than stick your head above the parapet and suffer the consequence of it. It explains how atrocities happen all over the world 'simply everyone knows, it isn't hurting me though I feel bad about it and if no-one else is really doing anything why should I risk it?' I'm not dismissing quiet protest, geographically it is a response to many happening further a field from you. Just that quiet protest and waiting for someone else to take the heat and then following their example are different things and in todays terms easily mixed up.

Transition to the red room around halfway through was very unsettling- great visual production!

I first heard of this story when reading John Scalzi's "Omelas State University", about Penn State higher-ups covering for one of their coaches being a serial child rapist. (Because blowing the whistle and saving the kid would have hurt their organization's reputation >_> God forbid anyone interfere with football. Or the Catholic Church, for that matter.) So my reading of Omelas will probably always be under a CSA lens. I can't imagine how the sacrifice would literally work in 'Omelas' beyond "dark magic", but I can picture a mayor or civil servant who is incredibly popular and good at their job, and who brings so much prosperity to the city that anyone who notices the literal child chained up in their basement... doesn't want to disrupt the apparent status quo. I also think about Cabin in the Woods, which involved a similar trade-off, and decided that any system that requires such horrors to sustain itself maybe should be burned the fuck down.

I hear there's an Afro-Futurism response to Omelas called "The One Who Stay and Fight;" I haven't read it yet, but I'd be interested to see the position that's argued in there. I'm curious to see what's offered there, as walking away doesn't seem to solve anything; it doesn't help the child, and only serves to alleviate the guilt of the people who leave, without causing any actual change.

Amazing how influential this story has been, while you were talking I thought about the star trek next gen utopia with a dark secret (any rule breaking results in death), midsommer with their death rituals, and that episode of Dr who with England floating on the back of a giant whale where they had the choice to forget that the whale transported them by having its brain electrocuted (which feels like the most similar). For a literary reference it kind of made me think of Farenheight 451 where the protagonist goes against the status quo to leave society Love to see themes running through different media

how prosperous is it really tho? is it really perfect, or is that just propaganda to keep people from trying another way? what is the full impact on a mind when you know that your wellbeing is dependent on a child being tortured? what happened to the child's parents? what if the prosperity of society actually relies on not pretending that everything can be perfect and trying to spread the misery out relatively evenly among everyone so that we can all work together to help each other rather than ignoring the suffering of our fellow beings?

Well-put. Really made me think. Utopia is difficult to even think about building because it implies the entirety of a people to prosper and given our real world, we only have sustained models of hierarchy and severe imbalances of power.

Thanks for posting this. I've read a lot of LeGuin and what I have noticed is that she frames conflict in such a way that the parties involved are not uniformly good or bad. I'm thinking of her novel 'The Dispossessed' as an example. This is one of the reasons why I reread her novels and stories. Thanks again.

Your videos always make me go straight to the Libby app to see if my library has whatever book/author you talked about!

Literally what the Hunger Games is about - and why no one stops the Games

I love le Guin discourse! Let's goooo 🎉

That mid point transition though!!! I don’t know why the algo hasn’t picked up your videos, they are SO GOOD! Eagerly binging what’s on KZfaq! :D

I remember reading Omelas in school and having recently been reading more Le Guin didn't realize she had done this as well. However I remember how deeply it affected my worldview at the time and given her works that makes a lot of sense. Great production on this video by the way. Mousey the Magnificent was an excellent co-host and the tail flick at their name mentioned was beyond adorable.

Maybe the secret fourth option is to just convince yourself that the child deserves it. I've met plenty of people like that.

Ok finnnnnnne I'll subscribe

Love this! Glad I found your channel today.

new to this channel, and wow your performance of the writing was breathtaking. I was listening while I worked and suddenly found myself glued in horror to the screen, my breath frozen for a moment, and as these few people walked away in silent protest, I could feel my eyes start to tear, swelling with familiar pain. This story feels like my everyday tortured feelings of living in Omelas or America and learning about the monstrosities that my country has done past, present, and future, the horrors they inflict on those I will never meet, but whose faces string themsleves across short blips of news coverage. I go on living my ordinary life with fully stocked grocery stores and a new phone, to go back to the home I live in amd joyfully tune out the world with silly entertainment and games, only to still know in the back of my mind that somewhere right now, there is a child in a room, leading a tortuous existence, that my normalities of life are only possible because of child labor somewhere far away or the repression of some unknown people. If I think to long about it I feel like I cannot breathe, and I cannot escape it, there is no life I could create that would save the child locked in that room. There is no power I hold that could change how this world functions. It is the unredeemable sadness of living with such privileges. Even to flee, to take myself out of the system itself, to somehow walk away or vanish in some unknown way outside of government systems and the trappings of global capitalism, the gears of the system would still turn, I could no longer reap its benefits yes, but I would still know... I would still know all too well the suffering I am still complicit in knowing. And to know and do nothing? is that wrong when there is nothing you can do to dismantle the manner in which this world turns. There is no moral way to survive. It sends shivers down my spine this thought. That I will always know that I as an individual can do nothing to stop atrocities from happening, even if I know them well, I can only choose not to be a part of them. My joy haunts me.

We had to read this in college in 2007 and I think about it STILL

Your content is consistently excellent. I am so happy to have found this channel.

A true "utopia" would neither have nor require such a dilemma to sustain itself. What it would require is a lot of continual work and vigilance to make sure scenarios like that never happened to anyone. Otherwise, it's just another case of "bliss is ignorance".

I'd be questioning who made the rule that one child has to suffer to give everyone happiness in the first place.

Thank you for mentioning the Palestinian Genocide. When you were describing the cellars of Omelas I couldn't help but imagine Gaza.

I love your videos and hearing your point of view on books and stories. One of my favourite youtube channels right now. Sending you best wishes!

Thanks a lot for these videos, extremely interesting and thought-provoking

I have needed this content so badly. Thank you. Honestly, I would leave and try to make my own life somewhere, hopefully with others detached from Omelas. That's a goal just easier said than done

Love your work here, as usual. Thank you for sharing your passion for literature with us ^_^ Walking away from Omelas hit me in a different way, to me it showed how walking away from injustice is a balm only to the one who is leaving not to the oppressed. After all, the child is still left in Omelas. The people who walk away from Omelas are like those in the trolly problem who couldn't push one person to save five. It is easier to pat ourselves on the back for not participating in suffering rather than doing the hard work to make the suffering cease.

once again, an absolutely smashing video.

You tied it to Palestine! I was just drafting my thoughts about how the people who leave Omelas mirror my own political awakening… and there, you did it. Your explorations are brilliant and heart felt ❤

Excellent video as usual!

I wrote to Auntie She-Bear years ago, after I had read what proved to be her last novel. She wrote back both times.

Seeing You and Mousey pop up in my feed always makes my week! Your content is consistently excellent and always leaves me with something to rethink about my on life.

Great analysis, especially an idea at the end about walking away not necessarily being the right option. After listening to this story my first thought was "Why won't the ones who can't bear to live in Omelas unite and try to rescue the child?" But then I thought what would happen to other people in this cruel utopia, especially the children who weren't even told why this city prospers. Though I still think that freeing the child is better than walking away even though direct action has the potential to make things worse. But it is probably hard to free the child, as it is hard to fix injustices. So not many people have the power to free the child which is why those who walk away from Omelas pick the other option.

Great video. Thank you for examination.

I'm a massive advocate for utilitarianism, I apply it to my whole outlook on life. It's why I'm vegan, it's why I give money to the homeless, why I join protest movements and why I try to go out of my way to do good and hold myself back from causing harm. I generally find criticisms of utilitarianism, especially in media, to be shallow and often just completely missing the point. Even most academic criticisms of utilitarianism I find to be poorly formed, for example the "Utility Monster" is considered the go to academic argument against utilitarianism which personally I find very unconvincing. To me, if you have to invent an impossible monster to generate a scenario in which utilitarianism doesn't look good, that's essentially an admission that it's pretty sound. But Omelas is a brilliant and genius discussion that combines the much personal and reasonable scenario with a human touch and manages to give the reader the opportunity to think for themselves. Omelas is so brilliant because there is no real good answer, it just makes you really consider which you'd choose and why. In some ways it does effectively critique utilitarian ethics, but it also doesn't go too far and label them as wrong. It forces us to consider the limits and the costs of our ethical decisions and I find it fascinating. It's so well constructed that I'm not even sure what the most utilitarian action would be. To allow the child to suffer? To walk away thereby refusing to cause harm either by hurting the child yourself or by hurting the other residents by helping the child? To try and create a new society that doesn't require hurting a child? To end the contract and attempt to replicate the conditions without the child? I have no idea. And that's why I love it. Le Guin has won ethics in literature as far as I'm concerned. She's already done it. She's beaten me at the very least.

In my opinion, a society that benefits from suffering, even the suffering of one individual, cannot even be considered a Utopia. If stopping the cycle of suffering means that Omelas falls, then so be it. We rebuild, we try again, and we do better.

I named my cat after her. This short story I had forgotten about and I am so happy to find it here. Thank you for doing this video!!

This story does not have a single interpretation. However, one that I have considered but not heard is that each of us is Omelas. Each of us is built upon a horrifically abused and imprisoned child. That child is core to our being a functioning human being in society. Our education, learning to move with grace and wit among our peers, is dependent upon the abuse of that child, that original nature. I think it is possible to see this as true of who one is and to walk away from the persona built upon the abused child. This walking away is something also explored in Le Guin's "The Dispossessed."

The heroic scenario would be 'would you choose to be the one person that passes to save the five' Basically you can stop the trolley from unaliving five by throwing yourself in front of it. Would you?

But the child is still suffering regardless of if i walk away or not... If I walk away without trying to save it, I'm also complicit but just to a lesser extent

I’ve never watched your channel before and was pleasantly surprised by your cat co-star.

Fantastic channel, Dr. Whitcombe. If I still taught English, I’d be directing my students here.

Thank you this was great

Aaaaaaaand just like that I want to watch The Good Place again.

This story reminds me of an episode of Doctor Who. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who might watch the episode in the future. So, I won’t share much of the details. Basically, a society is torturing a creature for their own survival and benefit. They are given the choice to forget and they always do. Their leader is given the choice to free the creature or forget, and she always forgets. They aren’t living in a utopia, and many are suffering or are killed, so there is that difference.

did you train your cat(s) to look into the camera or do they just naturally do that since you're looking at it

Can't wait!!

I had a dog named Mousie! (Although she was frequently referred to as Mousers.) It's an adorable name for a cat.

This video comes at a perfect time, I feel it puts things in simple terms and hopefully inspires others to understand why so many people continue to protest and demonstrate for causes they support

The fact that your channel is so unpopular is insane like genuinely

I forgot about this story somehow, thank you for reminding me, it’s one of those view changing stories

I feel trapped any time I think about this story. It immediately gets me thinking about how there’s no satisfactory way to walk away from our own society’s metaphorical Omelas (as I type this on a device containing components that are almost certainly sourced through slave labor). But it leaves me desperate to get out, as well. I feel this urge to avoid sitting with the knowledge of that child in the cellar, and the urge is so strong I don’t even recognize it.

2:07 Miss Mousey wagged her tail when she heard her name 🥰

I met LeGuin , a giant in Speculative Fiction, (SF) At a Portland SF Convention. Friends who knew her introduced her to me & I was tongue tied. Shook her hand, said a greeting, but could only nod a smile afterwords. I got to meet a number of really great Authors that convention, but they must have wondered who everyones Mute friend was.

Saying I love TOWWAfO sound weird, but I guess it's not wrong. Thank you for such a well-made, thoughtful video!

It’s a travesty that there are so many children today who still suffer through similarly traumatic or worse lives 💔🍉 Free Palestine

I find it interesting that the only method of fighting back anyone displays is abstention. No one seems interested in mounting a rescue mission. The only options are complicity, and abstention. 🤷🏻

I've heard this similar argument from shockingly quite a few people: "I would just stay in Omelas." "Leaving wouldn’t help the kid so might as well reap the results."

Commenting not because I have anything new to say but because this video is great and I want to drive engagement

Yes ma'am, I am HERE!

This is hard. They say the problem with theoretical problems is you can never really know how you'll react to them until they're no longer theoretical, until you're actually placed in that dilemma. So I can't say for sure. There's a possibility of a situation where, knowing everything about what's going on, I become a kicker. That frightens me.

For those in the comments, I would like to recommend a similar short story that's actually part of a collaborative online fiction project known as "SCP Foundation". The SCP foundation is about a secret organization that protects the world from entities that behave in a way that cannot be explained by science. Each entity is called an SCP which stands for "Secure Contain Protect". The SCP which is similar to "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" is SCP-231. Basically it's about 7 girls who have been impregnated with unspeakable horrors and to stop them from giving birth the SCP foundation has to do terrible things to the girls to stop them from giving birth to a world ending entity. They don't say what is done to the girls, but it is made clear it is horrible. I would recommend reading it, but just so you all know, it is not for the faint of heart.

This platform prevents me from commenting about how i interpret the story. Still i will give it a go without the, apparently problematic words. Omelas is the human condition, in which everyones existence results in someone elses suffering. The ones who walk away are the ones who answered Camus’ “only” question with a “yes”. On my most cynical days i consider the ones who partake in the orgies and the drugs to be the heroes.

Option 4 is to voluntarily take the child’s place . It happens sometimes. There are those who are that brave ! And in the original trolley problem to trow , jump in front of the trolley yourself . So you take the decision to die and so safe the others. Helas , even in that scenario you can have made the wrong decision because what if the people you saved by sacrificing yourself turn out to be horrible monsters who spent the lives you gave them by your decision hurting, molesting, killing, torturing others/ children for years to come. Putting a Child in the situation as described in Omelas? And if your solution is ‘ not’ looking away and take action by choosing where you spend your money / protesting a situation then why only in that situation and not in so many other situations where Children/ people are dying ? Does that make you a moral person? Or does that makes you take on a God persona deciding the live of some persons/ child is worth more than that of an other …… And so we are back at the starting point . Your reasoning is not flawless .

A very interesting story and I must admit I hadn’t even heard of this author. It is a very difficult dilemma, spontaneously I would say I would walk away, but then I would certainly have difficulty caring properly for my two cats 😢

Mousey The Magnificent ! I shared my life with The Great and Mighty Shadowfax. Sadly for only 8 years and I still mourn her.

This is my favorite story. I think to view it only as the Trolley Problem, though it certainly is a vivid example of the crisis of that thought experiment, is reductive. I view the story also as a criticism of our current state of being. We are often told that we live in a society of winners and losers, and when you look at the wealth gap and the increasing presence of poverty in a world that has never been wealthier in every conceivable resource, it certainly looks like that, but that, too, is simplistic. The old observation of status, "I wept because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet," reminds us that winning and losing occur on a spectrum, and we are never at the basest level. While there is life, there is always someone who has suffering greater than yours. Even if you are the person with shoes, neither barefoot nor footless, there is always someone who has comforts, luxuries, social status, emotional fulfillment, that exceed your own. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas has caused me to consider that we all live in the basement and in the city and are simultaneously oppressed and complicit in the oppression of all those around us. So the question the ones that leave are asking is, is it winning to be the oppressor, and is it losing to be oppressed, and isn't there a utopia possible where we can moderate our winning and losing so that no one is abused? Abuse itself is a socially bound and defined concept. It's often noticed that when wealthy people gather, they seldom smile, and yet smiles and fun abound in the poorest ghettoes. Introduce a soccer ball to the street in a slum in any part of the world and soon laughing urchins will be playing or inventing a game to play with it. Is that utopia? Does it matter that they are hungry, have sores festering under tattered clothing, are oppressed by wealthier or more powerful members of their society, if with a ball or an idea they are freed from sorrows by playing with their comrades? When I was a child, I was always hungry, and my family was poor by local standards. My father often engaged in illegal activities to bring home what resources we had, and so I often contemplated what it meant to go to prison, and extended the question to what it meant to have freedom without the power to change anything at all. I concluded that to be free meant that no matter what oppression I faced, I must be able to free my mind. Thrown in solitary confinement I must be able to find freedom in my imagination. Only that was within my control. Only that would allow me to be free without power, and so I invested in intellectual pursuits. I built a palace in my mind, filled with chess games, and stories, and math, and artwork, so that when I found myself in the cellar I would have no need to beg for comforts, or for release, or for any kindness at all. I furnished my mind with all the comforts I would need, except... Except that human beings are not made to be alone. We cannot long be happy without the companionship and love of others. I am transgender, and my society in the last eight years or so has focused its gaze upon me in a most uncomfortable way. I have found myself a pariah in many circumstances, or at least an unperson, unworthy of the love of others. In essence, I have been invited into the cellar, not as a witness, but as a sacrifice, and though my suffering does not compare to the devastating suffering of the child in our story, it has caused me to consider that we are all in the cellar, all the time. I want to walk away from Omelas. I want to be neither sacrificed, nor complicit, but where oh where will I go? I think the story is far more nuanced than even its author could have appreciated. Omelas, Homme Alas, alas humanity, there is no paradise. Utopia, after all, means No Place. Where shall we walk?

I read this story as part of a book of LeGuin shorts... Beautiful and brutal, I have never reread it and never forgotten it. Not too much to say, but for the trolley? Rip up the switch and throw it at the track to block and slow the trolley down enough to rescue the single guy on the track.

I read this story with my class as assigned reading in middle school, and it definitely messed me up a bit. I would try to discuss it further with my classmates, who were over it already, and didn't care much to rehash the story that definitely caused everyone discomfort. I reread and reread, trying to make sense of it, but I was unsatisfied every time. It wasn't until high school that I reread again, and finally accepted why it made me feel the way it did. Still can't put to words the horror, but I'd like to think reading and thinking on it made me a more compassionate person overall.

Dear Dr Rosie, Mouse, and Books 'n' Cats team, Your videos make me so happy and I appreciate evey one, thank you so very much. The way you make evrything clear and how you recite passages is truly amazing and appreciate all of your efforts, I'm a young, very avid, reader and this just makes me feel at home. I would like to see a video about children books, not YA or books that are for a very young audience (f.ex. Peter Rabbit ecc.), but books like My Name Is Mina by David Almond, or the Chronicles Of the Cherry Tree and The Maple Tree by Camille Monceaux, or again Seven Minutes After Midnight by Patrik Ness and Siobhan Dowd. It's a category witch is very successful and I belive a bit overlooked. Here we have great authors like Davide Morosinotto that write for "children" and I never hear his name on the media even tho MANY read his books. What I'm trying to say is: children books are amazing, why does nobody read them? Are the sceptical? Snob? Imbarassed? I think they are missing out, a good story is ageless. Why are they not publicised like YA romantasys? Is there more to just pushing them to side beacouse of theyr category or is there something more to it? Why dose nobody talk about actually good children books? Sorry if it's a bit long, but it's a subject I am extremely passionate about, and I am open to see other people's point of view, especially a professional one like yours. Yours, great fan P.S.: I am sorry if there are any mistakes. English is not my first language :)

One can take the child's place. I kept waiting for this option of choice to come up, especially with the young people visiting for the first time. If you add that angle to the story - that every citizen lives their utopian life knowing that they can end the child's suffering at any point by taking its place, adds a whole another level of complexity.