Omelas=Guilt

It sounds like Ursula K. Le Guin does not believe in fairy tales. Throughout the whole story she is describing a beautiful city and beautiful people but at the end it all changes. These people who walk away from Omelas are the ones who realize that fairy tales exist, but it is at the expense of others' well being. This is the message that Le Guin is trying to portray. No matter how perfect the society is, or how docile the people are, there is always something behind the scene or in this case cooped up in a small room that detracts from the utopia. "The terms are strict." This tells me that there was some sort of deal between this utopian society and another being. This surely tells us about how politics runs this society. The part of the story that puzzles me is when the author says, "One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt." But later on it tells me that when people see this locked up child for the first time "they may brood over it for weeks or years." This certainly sounds like guilt to me, or at least a side effect of guilt. Then the people make excuses and say, "Indeed after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in." I do not know if the statement by Le Guin is sarcasm when she says the guilt is absent in Omelas because this whole society seems guilty and excuses are rampant. Indeed there are no fairy tale societies but if enough people believe and adore in a perverted way of living than sure fairy tales exist but only at the expense of another’s conscious. The conscious of the few who walk away have been troubled, thus destroying the very thing they hoped and dreamed was a reality. The only ones to admit their guilt and want to do something about it are the ones who leave Omelas and never return. Where are they going, the ones who walk away? They just know that Omelas is not where they are going.