Nature Of happiness.edited

Student Name
Professor
ENG 102_002
3/19/18
Nature of Happiness in Ursula’s Ones who walked away from Omelas
What would be the case if the price of happiness will no longer hold its value in the society? At times, to be happy, one must often compare and contrast happiness on the failures of others. Happiness can be depicted as having a sense of good life as opposed to emotion. The quest for happiness in today’s society is founded on the assumption of free will; that is, happiness is accrued merely from the amount of wealth, pleasure or power. This kind of understanding is misinformed. Actually, happiness cannot be manipulated; hence, happiness is only in the eyes of the beholder. Therefore, one does not need objects such as money or a ring, neither people to create it-there is no reason for an exchange to bring it into existence. In this current society, happiness has conflicted personal and moral values. Hence, persons no longer know how to be content. From this overview, happiness can be summarized as a strong mental perception to develop in mind a feasible, significant existence in a world that is unreliable and fundamentally unjust. Ursula Le Guin utilizes the character traits of the unisex child to help the reader to understand the flaws in humans that exist in the society; hence, limit peoples’ quest to seek happiness.
Ursula Le Guin uses the unisex child to help convey the inhumane behaviors of happiness that exist in the society. For the reader, the child may represent a female or male.

The child is given no name and is treated lower than an animal. The narrator explains,
But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed (Le Guin, Par. 8)
The residents of Omela live without guilt and they do not live by any morally acceptable standards of conduct. Their inhumane way of life is reliant on one’s superiority to their neighbors. The society pushes all the condemnation on women and men in a bid to ensure that they seem happier. Thus, they drown them with over-size festival, music, and dancing to distract them from their thoughts or feelings. The fact that bread and circuses win every time evidently upholds this fact.
Consequently, the author uses the child to symbolize the Omelas’ happiness. The author notes, “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting…This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain” (Le Guin, Par. 2) Hence, this is the cause of the child’s injustice.
This story is symbolic and provides a good example of an allegory or a story in which concrete items or characters represent abstract ideas. The root word of utopia is “no place”. In the text, the narrator’s unsure tone suggests that it is not a specific place. Hence, the reader might interpret it that it is anywhere where the practice of singling out a person or group for unmerited blame and consequent negative treatment occurs. The child’s anguish allows for happiness to occur for everyone else. Also, the child’s sacrifice increases the harmony of pleasure over pain. Moreover, the child appears to give up everything to gain something of greater value. Therefore, this reveals the ambiguity of Omelas’ relationship with happiness which is void of sadness, despair, and jealousy. The child is unisex for a reason to show that social injustice is kept in the dark. As such, this is evident in the people of Omela who reject the guilt and anything that reminds them of what their happiness is dependent on.
Aside from that, the author uses the child to convey a message to the readers about manipulation of happiness. The narrator states, “Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas? They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much anymore. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions” (Le Guin, par. 2). Ursula uses the setting to create beautiful music and dancing, a joyful attraction to convey joy in the reader’s mind. However, then disrupts the atmosphere to question and examine their way of life to be as true as the narrative described. The child is used as a significant symbol to effectively create emotional responses in the reader’s mind and is also used to criticize the inhumane members of today’s society.
Social injustice is today’s society is taught in schools, television, and parents. The moral unfairness in one society either rewards or burdens you for your perception or attributes. The key symbol in the story strengthen its central theme: pain is inevitable and followed by a sense of pride. Something sinister has to take place for it to look perfect. The worse in us. How much control can you give before you lose it?

Work Cited
Le Guin, Ursula. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” (1973). Accessed at: http://miscellaneous.archive.tjw.moe/omelas.pdf. Accessed 2018 May 5
.