The Gate Keepers, who are dressed in their protective suits and carry large tranquilizer weapons, ensure that all stays calm, and that anyone who walks out of the gate is not to return. These infants who die are often sent away outside the gates with the Gate Keepers who protect Omelas from outside the gates. This final farewell is required for all who have the white tattoo. This tattoo is given at age two so that any infant who were to die of any sudden death or illness would not be required to be sunk on the Lake of Insurgence, where all people are sent after death.
The Record Takers scan the people’s wrists where their family symbol is tattooed on their wrists in white ink. Once you leave the gates, you never come back. After two strikes you are sent out of the gates. They are sorted into lines by gender and age and must check in with the Record Takers who check attendance for all events and keep record of strikes of individuals. Everyone gathers in the town square at the blowing of the whistle. This day is a reminder of why our humble town is so happy and how we are able to provide for our home, Omelas. On June 12, all citizens of Omelas are required to partake in the Annual Observation Day. Thanks to Ursula to inspiring me to create this and to Terri Grimes, my AP Literature Composition teacher, who taught me what it meant to be a writer. Inexplicably, there are some young people, and sometimes even an adult, who, shortly after viewing the child, leave Omelas through its gates and head into the mountains. Thus, the people have been taught compassion and the terrible reality of justice, and on this they base their lives. The Omelas people know that if the child were released, then the possible happiness of the degraded child-and it is only possible, not probable-would be set against the sure failure of the happiness of the many. The city’s great happiness, its splendors and health, its architecture, music, and science, all are dependent on the misery of this one child. If the child were rescued from its cell-like closet, the whole of the city of Omelas would falter. No one is allowed to speak even a kind word to the child, and no one stays with it long. The child barely talks, except for a bit of whining gibberish and a plea, heard less and less often, to be let out. It is fed half a bowl of cornmeal mush a day and is left to sit, naked, in dirt and its own excrement. The child is locked in a closet and shown off to those who wish to see it. The bargain is this: In a room under the city is a stunted, frightened, half-starved child, and everyone over adolescence in Omelas knows that the child is there. The city has a guarantee of happiness it has struck a bargain, although how and with whom it is not clear. There is something that makes the city special in another way. This picture of Omelas is not the whole story. Their lives are not wretched, nor are they puritanical.
Omelas is a joyful city inhabited by mature, intelligent, passionate adults. Those luxuries that are neither necessary nor destructive, they also have. Those things that are necessary, they have. These people have come to an understanding of what is necessary, what is destructive, and what is both or neither. The people may lack certain things that others have, but they do not feel that lack as a deprivation. However, the narrator insists that the people of Omelas lead complex lives. Happiness implies a kind of innocence and foolishness and lacks the complexities that are most often attributed to pain and evil impulses.
The narrator is conscious of the fact that the idea of happiness, and in particular the happiness of an entire city, may be a suspect concept to others. The day is bright and clear, music of all kinds fills the air, bells ring, and the air itself is sweet. The children ride willing horses in races and race about the fields in their bare feet. On the day on which the narrator is focusing, the city’s people are celebrating the summer festival. Omelas is a utopian city where the people lead lives that are happy, in the best sense of the word.
This is an ending to "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", a short story by Ursula K. Ending to "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." Get the App Introduction
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