So what if there's a child in the shed?

There are few things I love more than a good short story. In many ways, a short story is more difficult than a novel: it needs a tight plot, it doesn't get pages and pages to develop its characters. It doesn't have the luxury of being allowed to wind down on some sweet, light lullaby of phrasing; ideally it should deliver a punch on the last page powerful enough to deprive you of your wind. And Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" does exactly that.

Tiptoe away and read it before you keep going; I won't be the one to ruin the ending for you.

Back now? Well, I debated whether or not this was a wise post to write. In the first place, Ursula Le Guin is adamantly pro-choice, and I'd hate it if I were a published author and someone used one of my stories to support, say, abortion. But I still feel that when an author gets to the root of things in a story like this one, she can sometimes highlight the flaws even in her own thinking.

Borrowing an idea which dates back to the work of Dostoyevsky, Le Guin gives us, in gorgeous, glorious detail, a land without suffering. Its members are not naive; they are intelligent, impassioned. They are scholars and singers, artists and mothers. The more we delve into their society (with the author by our side, of course, like J.M. Barrie in Peter Pan), the more there doesn't seem to be a catch. Drugs are available, which bring "a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs", but they are "not habit-forming", and very few feel the need to take them. Love is free, but also free of negative consequence;  "[o]ne thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt."

"A boundless and generous contentment," Le Guin writes, "a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer: this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life."

But wait, hang on a minute; in one tool shed, in one basement, there sits a child, seemingly suspended in agelessness (though hardly to its benefit), starving, awash in filth, utterly miserable, to whom no one is allowed to talk, though it occasionally cries for help (less and less often, as numbness enters its brain). It "has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice".

"They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weather of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery … If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. … The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child."

This is explained to all of the children of Omelas at some point, usually before they enter their teens. They react in the way one might expect: with shock, anger, tears. "But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. …Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it." They assimilate into society again; they vow to be better people, more compassionate. No one commits the treason of rescuing the child at the expense of thousands. "Now do you believe in them?" the author asks sadly. "Are they not more credible?"

My friends, we are living in a society today that is entirely dependent on the destruction of children; not in sheds, but in wombs. Because they were not easily seen, we were once told that they were not children at all. Like the young ones of Omelas we were blissful in our ignorance. But since sonogram images and scientific evidence don't match up with this idea, more and more abortionists, more and more who espouse the pro-choice cause, are admitting the truth. These are children, yes, but either they have to go or we do.

"Here's the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal," writes Salon author Mary Elizabeth Williams in the column "So what if abortion ends life?" "That's a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always."

If we overthrow abortion, Williams argues, there go our rights as women; the rights we've worked so hard for over the years. There goes Omelas, where actions carry no consequence. She takes it for granted that pro-lifers are "wingnuts", bullies, when they're the ones standing up for what she freely admits is the life of a child. It's not too surprising when you think about it; suppose some people invaded Omelas and announced their intention to storm the shed, to save the child. Would they not be labelled terrorists?

Let's put aside the question of whether this society of ours that allows the slaughter of its unborn is really the utopia we might have hoped, and ask ourselves: even if it were, even if our lives were utterly perfect and breathtakingly beautiful at the surface, would they be worth the price?

"We are not going back to the Dark Ages [when abortion was a crime]," Ursula Le Guin wrote in her 1982 essay The Princess. "…There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.”

When I read this quote, I see exactly what I see when I look at William's column: a defense of Omelas (which, after all, would seem to be a city of life and light) from the very woman who exposes it. I must beg of you; when you see that child huddled in that shed, do not try to justify it. Be like the people of the title, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Or better yet, stay. Stay and fight. Storm the shed, save the child.