The ones who walk away from Omelas

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

3. “Write what happens to a person who walks away, extend the story.”

When I started to walk I didn’t have any idea where I wanted to go. All I knew is that I wanted to get away. I wanted to leave the hurt and pain that I felt for the child behind. I wanted the images that were stuck in my memory to go away. I could have stayed and lived on liked everything that I experienced when I saw the poor thing in that basement like everyone else did. But I couldn’t. The day I decided to walk away was a warm summer evening. I never really got cold in Omelas so I only wore a light coat. The leaves on the trees were on the peak of turning in to fall colors. The sun streaming through the trees shone on the side walk in a brilliant river of gold. I only knew one thing when I left. I wanted my life to change. I would miss my family and everything I had ever grown up with. But I knew that inside I was doing the right thing. So I started to walk, not looking back. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone, and I didn’t say hello to the ones that I passed in the streets knowing that if I did I would turn back and go home.

Minuets, hours, day, maybe months passed by, or so it felt. I don’t know how long I had been walking. I didn’t know where I was. All I knew is that I had been walking for what seemed like forever. My legs were screaming with pain. I was never much of a walker. I decided to sit down to rest on a nearby rock. I looked around me, and say that I had been walking on a dirt path in the midst of a forest. The dirt path was made up of moss and some leaves that had started to fall off of the huge trees that rose over my head making a canopy. Sun shone through the breaks in the leaves. I suddenly felt a shock of a tingling sensation in my heart, and for the first time in months I smiled to myself. For the first time in months I felt free. Like I could do things, things that I had only dreamed about doing. For the first time I didn’t have to worry about anything. Or so I thought.

As I started to walk again, I felt full of energy. A slight breeze had started to flow through the air. The breeze sent a slight shiver down my spine. I felt light on my feet. The path ahead of me seemed to go on forever. I wanted a change of scenery. After a while I became kind of lonely. There were no human beings around for me to see of talk to. When I was in Omelas, I didn’t think that there was any other land beyond the Gates that lead into Omelas. It was a wonder that the land that lay beyond Omelas. I had thought that I would be able to see huge flowers or, things flying in the sky, I thought that I would be greeted by the sing song voice of birds above me, but everything was silent except for the crunching of dirt under my feet. I looked above me and saw that the once brilliant glow of the sun had turned into a greyish blue dust filled with the first stars of the night. I decided to lay down for the night and drift away into my dreams.

I woke up sometime in maybe the early morning or middle of the night, the exact time I couldn’t really be sure of. The sight that I saw around me was not one that I would want to see again. I felt blind. I couldn’t see anything around me. My heart started to race. Above me I heard the night calls of the creatures of the dark around me. I slowly got to my feet. What if one of these animals sees me and eats me? I had never been around creatures that lived outside of Omelas. The only thing that I knew about them was from the stories that the elders in Omelas would tell us. The stories would be about brave men who left Omelas to fight for us but would never return. The elders said that the reason they didn’t return was due to a creature they called “Big Foot”. Big Foot was said to have large sharp teeth and stood to be one hundred feet tall. I had never really believed these stories, but now alone in the dark these stories all came back to me. The only thing I wanted to do was run away from this dark. I started to walk blindly along the path that I thought would be ahead of me.

I kept walking in the in the dark, again not knowing what was ahead of me. But the only difference now was that I also didn’t know what was on either side of me or what was behind me. The hard rocks under my shoes stabbed like knives into the arch of my feet. I wanted to cry out but I couldn’t for I was afraid that the creatures all around me would attack. So I sucked up my pain and continued walking along a hidden path. I walked wishing that someone would come and lead me to the light. After what seemed like ages of walking the once opaque night around me turned in to a foggy grey glow of very early morning. A spark of light began to rise again inside of me. I took a look around me trying to figure out where I was but it was no use. Of course nothing would look familiar, but I did it anyway. I continued walking looking at the trees high above me. Suddenly I felt as if I was flying. It only lasted a minuet; I landed in the moss covered ground on my side. A warm yet burning sensation started to flow down my arm and leg. Tears came to my eyes blinding me once again, but not with the dark, just with pain. Wiping the tears away I looked down at myself to see blood. Lots of blood. It covered my arms, and legs. I sucked in a rapid breath. My body burned like a thousand flames. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Omelas was safe. Protecting everyone from harm. I didn’t know what to do. I felt miserable. I decided to rip a piece off of my shirt and wrap it around my wounds. The itchiness from the cloth irritated my skin. I was glad that I didn’t have a mirror, for I could just imagine what I looked like. For a minuet I was glad that no one was around because I wouldn’t know if I looked presentable or not.

Finally standing up I started to walk again. I didn’t want to go on. I wasn’t prepared for the outside world. It was nothing like I imagined it would be. I wanted to give up. My legs were a thousand pounds walking down the path.

Months later I found myself still walking. I never found anyone else. All I ever saw was the trees surrounding me. Sometimes if I was lucky I would see a single bird flying through the once amazingly blue sky. In my eyes, everything seemed dull and dreary. I was tired. Every part of me was weak. I didn’t want to walk, I didn’t want to sleep, and I didn’t want to eat. I felt as if I were in a nightmare that would never end. But I continued walking. The weather had changed from a warm breeze that once sent a small shiver up my spine to a blistering cold that chilled my bones. White powder covered my path. I had to drag myself along to keep from freezing to death. After a day or two of walking the trees and path turned into an open field. It was beautiful. The powder had melted a bit and the first patches of the new spring grass could be seen. Butterflies fluttered their tiny wings before me. They called to me, telling me it was safe to rest, telling me that everything would be ok. As I lay down, looking at the sky, I felt happiness, maybe even joy. The sun was warm on my face. For once in a long time I felt very safe. Closing my eyes I drifted off into a more peaceful place. My body felt warm and everything around me turned into white gold wonderland filled with all the things I had ever dreamed of. Opening my eyes was too difficult for me. So I stayed there. In the field, and never once had to worry about anything ever again.

Seminar Reflection

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Part 2

#1.What is the difference between the people who walk away and the ones who stay in Omelas?

Omelas. This is the name of a town that sounds like a possibly nice town from the name and the description. The only thing you don’t know about it is what really goes on behind the scenes in the town of Omelas. Once a year Omelas holds a wonderful parade. People from the town chat merrily to each other in the streets and so do the men. Children run around naked screaming with excitement. Everything seems joyous and carefree, but when the whole town is in cheer one living child lives in misery. Locked in a basement with hardly anything to eat and sitting in its own poop, living in misery. The child doesn’t know why its there, what it had done to deserve this. You may be asking, do the people know its there? And I would say YES! Yes they do. The people of Omelas have leaned to accept this fact. Well I can’t say all people; some people in Omelas choose to walk away.

In the town of Omelas there is a really big difference from the people who decide to walk away and the people who decide to stay. The people who stay in Omelas have a good life. As it says in the document on page 3 it says that “One thing I know that there none of in Omelas is guilt”. What I got from this sentence is that the people in Omelas must not live in regret, and not living a life full of regret is pretty nice. Then again I would have to ask myself is living a life without regret everything? The people who choose to walk away because they regret what the people of Omelas have done to the child and they choose to walk away from it. I think one of the main differences about the people that walk away is that they actually do care. When the see the child the sometimes become silent for a few days and then they leave Omelas. They don’t know where they are going but they just keep walking (paragraph 14). Another difference is that the people in Omelas know they are not free, just like the child (paragraph 12) and they choose to stay that way but the people who decide to walk away become free. They can think what they want to think, and they don’t have to be around the child in the basement. These might not really seem like really big differences but to me they are. I think that what the people who walk away are doing is good. They know they cant do anything to help the child so they decide to take initiative and walk away themselves so that they don’t have to be part of they community that lets the child live there alone and sad. So in my own opinion the people who walk away are doing something good and the ones who stay aren’t doing something very good. Those are the differences about the people who walk away and they people who stay.