Metaphors in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Abstract

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1929-2018) is a feminist American writer who mainly concentrates on creating fantasy and science fiction as well as children literature. Her subsequent novel The Dispossessed even redefines the category and style of utopian novel. And this paper is going to analyse one of her utopian science fictions named The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, which is included in Le Guin’s one collection of short stories, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, giving analysis based on the short story mainly about the multiple metaphors within, investigating the features of Omelas as a utopian city and the miserable state of the basement kid described by the narrator, through its paradoxes to prove Le Guin’s critical attitude in moral aspect toward those who stay in Omelas without feeling guilty.

Consisting of four parts, this paper taking the structural setting and the metaphorical management as primary clue, firstly tries to make clear that how the author depicts the joyous city Omelas as a utopian city in both surface and deep aspects. And then the second chapter analyzes what ethical metaphor the basement kid stands for as the character of a pitiful sufferer that is born to be the sacrifice for collective interest. Then the third chapter focuses on the different choices of its citizens when they face the same moral dilemma, investigating the inverting feeling brought by the ridiculous reality and the unbelievable choice. Finally the fourth chapter illustrates the surface and the authentic representations of the “lost soul”. Based on the four-chapter analysis above, this paper comes to the conclusion that: though the four metaphors, Le Guin implicitly but powerfully highlights the comparison of the joyous city and the basement kid, effectively expressing the elaboration of critique toward the immoral behavior of staying in the city and ignoring the unfair dealing – even people know the difficulties and restrictions of, and feel affectively conditioned to the city, but it is immoral to view the deal as just or be cheerful of the joy of the city.

Key word: Ursula K. Le Guin; The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas; metaphor; utopia; the moral dilemma