The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
“Ursula Le Guin is more than just a writer of adult fantasy and science fiction . . . she is a philosopher; an explorer in the landscapes of the mind.” – Cincinnati Enquirer
The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and the Pushcart Prize, Ursula K. Le Guin is renowned for her spare, elegant prose, rich characterization, and diverse worlds. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a short story originally published in the collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.
Ursula K. Le Guin
URSULA K. LE GUIN was born in Berkeley, California, in 1929, and passed away in Portland, Oregon, in 2018. She published over sixty books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children’s literature, and translation. She was the recipient of a National Book Award, six Hugo and five Nebula awards, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Read more from Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dispossessed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Telling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lathe Of Heaven Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lavinia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catwings Return Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very Far Away from Anywhere Else Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catwings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jane on Her Own Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Related ebooks
The Wind's Twelve Quarters: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lathe Of Heaven Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very Far Away from Anywhere Else Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hidden Girl and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Wizard of Earthsea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Herland Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Convenience Store Woman: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tombs of Atuan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Cosmicomics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Axiom's End: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ubik Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Other Wind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChildren of Time: The Complete Book Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Metamorphosis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Farthest Shore Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Franz Kafka - Collected Works Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Death of Ivan Ilych Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Under The Skin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Illustrated Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blindness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Fiction For You
The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If We Were Villains: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prophet Song: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
187 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Short but Impactful. I recommend to read the introduction later if you don’t want the story to be spoiled but it’s more about the questions that reading it makes you think of rather than what happens.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sort of a mirror to what's happening in society now.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of the best short stories I have ever read. Ursula at her best.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We all know this reality, but fail to accept. The author's way of showing us the reality yet again is intriguing & hard-hitting.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This (very) short tale introduces a eye opening question. You just have to read it!
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful short story by one of the best sci-fi writers.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My heart. Wow. This is incredible. I totally recommend it. It is beautiful and quite moving.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Someone wrote in a review on here that this isn’t the entire short story but this is. Don’t let that person fool you. It’s a short read but definitely worth it.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Super short and interesting. Will make you think about what beings are suffering on our planet now for our pleasure.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It is such a beautiful novel. I loved it to pieces and wish everyone would read it just once in their lives. Also, there is a competition right now until the end of May with a theme Werewolf on the NovelStar app, I hope you can consider joining. If you have more stories like this, you can also publish them there just email the editors hardy@novelstar.top, joye@novelstar.top lena@novelstar.top.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This is not the full book. It is an excerpt linking to another online book service. It is deceptive marketing on Scribd’s behalf to allow these kinds of tactics.
2 people found this helpful
Book preview
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - Ursula K. Le Guin
CONTENTS
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Afterword
About the Author
Praise
Also by Ursula K. Le Guin
Back Ads
Copyright
About the Publisher
THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS
(Variations on a theme by William James)
The central idea of this psychomyth, the scapegoat, turns up in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, and several people have asked me, rather suspiciously, why I gave the credit to William James. The fact is, I haven’t been able to re-read Dostoyevsky, much as I loved him, since I was twenty-five, and I’d simply forgotten he used the idea. But when I met it in James’s The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,
it was with a shock of recognition. Here is how James puts it:
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier’s and Bellamy’s and Morris’s utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?
The dilemma of the American conscience can hardly be better stated. Dostoyevsky was a great artist, and