I recently assigned my high school sophomores Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic short story “
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
.” The story asks the reader to imagine a beautiful city on a day of celebration. The people of Omelas are peaceful, prosperous, happy, and free. It seems a heaven on earth. But there’s a catch. Somewhere in the city an innocent child is imprisoned in a dark basement, where it sits in its own excrement, covered in sores, whimpering. If this child were to be freed, if someone were to so much as speak a kind word to it, Omelas would become as dismal and chaotic as any other city. Everyone knows about the child; they learn about it in school. While most citizens accept the child’s torture as the necessary price for their bliss, a few leave the town in despair.