"Omelas" Blog

Gandhi and Humphrey, in their quotes, both focus on the needs of the people in the community that are lacking in some aspect. Those aspects consist of health, maturity, knowledge, and inexperience. Humphrey acknowledges those things more directly than Gandhi, but both are saying the same thing. Humphrey explains how the most important people of the community are the elders, children, handicapped, sick, and needy. The elders teach to the children; the future of the community. How you treat the handicapped, needy, and sick also shows a lot about the community that you are in. A community that doesn’t acknowledge or address these issues is naïve, careless, and negligible. If a community wants to be strong, united, and successful, it must pay attention to the weaker parts of the community. Youth may be seen as the most important of all the categories since they determine the future and fate of a community. If the youth are corrupted in thought, the outcome of the future is not pleasant. In the poem “The Ones That Walked Away From the Omelas,” this is exactly what is taking place, corruption of youth. Gandhi’s quote describes how a nation treats its weakest members determines the greatness of that nation. It is identical to a famous quote, “You are only as strong as your weakest link.” This explains how if we do not tend to the weak and strengthen them, one day it will catch up to us. I have heard this in soccer very often, when a player is weaker than others, they could cost a game off of one wrong move. In the “Omelas,” it describes a community that tortures one innocent child to ensure the happiness of others. It a morally wrong environment and those who have gone to see the child have never returned to the community. Which comes to prove that no one wants to a live in an unjust community. We yearn for better, but when we are blinded to the horrors, it becomes impossible to comprehend the morality of the community. This is what happens to the citizens of Omelas. It doesn’t matter if one or a thousand children, adults, elderly, sick, needy, or handicapped people are being tortured; it should not happen at all. Gandhi and Humphrey are saying that until no one is tortured, it cannot even be considered a good community. Until we abolish the bad and fix the problems, results cannot be successful.