The thirdperson narrator uses an objective point of view to describe the city with its “Green Fields” that are protected on the west and north side by the snow-covered “Eighteen Peaks” (566–567), creating an almost fairy-tale existence for the people. The story begins with a description of the Festival of Summer in Omelas, a city by the sea. While the story has been used by pro-lifers and ecofeminists to support their points of view, the majority of the criticism has focused on the religious implications and the utopian nature of the place Le Guin calls Omelas. The story acknowledges its debt to the philosopher William James in its subtitle (“Variations on a Theme by William James”), but it also connects to works such as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov as well as Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery in its use of the scapegoat theme. The story is an allegory about a utopian society, which invites readers to decide what the moral of the story should be. Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” which was first published in 1973, then collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975), has appeared since then in multiple anthologies. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
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