Imagination and Modernism

Imagination and fantasy are the main experimentation methods employed in the book by Le Guin.  In The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin, experimentation is executed uniquely and memorably using imagination. Le Guin states, “With a clamour of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea.” The statement brings the reader into the setting without explanations, allowing the reader to fantasize about the city. The party life of the city is presented in different dimensions for the reader to take a stance.

The imagination and fantasy make the readers become more profoundly and unwittingly citizens of the city and make their own decisions, such as handling the suffering child. For instance, Le Guin offers two views of those who chose to stay and those who left (Guin). He states, “The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness.”   The story focuses on individualism, bringing the reader into the account by asking questions while presenting multiple perspectives. In the end, Le Guin presents the gruesome moral decisions that must be made in the readers’ life as done in the story.

Works Cited

Guin, Ursula K. Le. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story. New York: Harper Perennial, 2017.