A Study Guide for Ursula K. Le Guin's "Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Ursula K. Le Guin's "Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535830287

Book preview

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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Ursula K. Le Guin

1973

Introduction

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is Ursula K. Le Guin’s allegorical tale about a Utopian society in which Omelas’ happiness is made possible by the sacrifice of one child for the sake of the group. In an allegory, many symbols and images are used in an attempt to illustrate universal truths about life. Omelas was first published in the magazine New Directions in 1973, and the following year it won Le Guin the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story. It was subsequently printed in her short story collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters in 1975. Le Guin is known primarily as a science fiction and fantasy writer, and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is notable for being one of the few short stories of the genre to be widely anthologized in collections of general fiction. It is also notable for containing a vagueness uncharacteristic of many short story writers; its narrator leaves it up to the reader to imagine many of the town’s details and