Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. But when I met it in James' ' The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,' it was with a shock of recognition." 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. "The central idea of this psychomyth, the scapegoat", writes Le Guin, "turns up in Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, and several people have asked me, rather suspiciously, why I gave the credit to William James. Le Guin?' From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Le Guin hit upon the name of the town on seeing a road sign for Salem, Oregon, in a car mirror. Le Guin stated that the city's name is pronounced "OH-meh-lahss". But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas." The story ends with "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. However, a few citizens, young and old, silently walk away from the city, and no one knows where they go. Once citizens are old enough to know the truth, most, though initially shocked and disgusted, ultimately acquiesce to this one injustice that secures the happiness of the rest of the city. The city's constant state of serenity and splendor requires that a single unfortunate child be kept in perpetual filth, darkness, and misery. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all." Everything about Omelas is so abundantly pleasing that the narrator decides the reader is not yet truly convinced of its existence and so elaborates upon the final element of the city: its one atrocity. The narrator reflects that "Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. The specific socio-politico-economic setup of the community is not mentioned the narrator merely claims not to be sure of every particular. Omelas has no kings, soldiers, priests, or slaves. The vibrant festival atmosphere, however, seems to be an everyday characteristic of the blissful community, whose citizens, though limited in their advanced technology and communal (rather than private) resources, are still intelligent, sophisticated, and cultured. In Omelas, the summer solstice is celebrated with a glorious festival and a race featuring young people on horseback. The only chronological element of the work is that it begins by describing the first day of summer in Omelas, a shimmering city of unbelievable happiness and delight.
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