I'm also reminded of the dispossessed, in which le guin describes two worlds, a capitalist society in which people are rich but have curtailed freedoms and some authoritarian aspects, and a kind of socialist anarchy where people are very poor, claim to be free, and are constrained by culture and custom rather than law.

I find that people who come into the book with a strong prior on capitalism being good or bad will also end up with a clear view on which "utopia" is better. The book itself is probably a critique of the idea that utopia is even possible and whether it's a coherent concept at all.

C. Anti-Meme

This is the least likely but most entertaining explanation: Le Guin demonstrated our inability to accept pure utopia so effectively that even she couldn't see past it afterwards – she fell victim to her own anti-meme. She wrote the story, knew what she was doing while writing it, but when she looked back at it later, she could only see the suffering child and the utilitarian dilemma.

Maybe not "fell victim to her own anti-meme", but "after hearing everyone analyze her story as a utilitarian parable, she started believing in that explanation too and forgot what she originally had in mind when writing it". It feels like the kind of thing that has happened to me sometimes, so it wouldn't be surprised if it happened to Le Guin, too. 

“Omelas Is Perfectly Misread” —> “The ones who misread Omelas”. :)

I think it's worth noting that this is generally not how literary criticism is done? It is good and right to accept that authors are often mistaken about the meaning of their own work. If you can explain an idea simply then you do so simply - the reason to create art is to express ideas that lose something in the process of being simplified, and so artists expect (or should expect) that the meaning of their own work is not fully legible to them. That is to say, it is possible for this to be a completely correct reading without Le Guin herself having ever been aware of it.

I have just read the story, the post, and several comments, now amalgamating them in this reading:

The citizens of Omelas torture the child because they know that they themselves wouldn't believe in their own utopia (just like the reader).

and that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children [...] depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

It depends on it precisely because of this human flaw of not being capable of believing in such a perfect world without any tradeoffs. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts - they need to torture the child because they believe they need to torture the child.

The ones who walk away, therefore, are those who are able to recognize and discard that flaw, and build a new utopia without tradeoffs.

One thing that makes Omelas such a good story is that it supports a variety of interpretations.  For me, it supported two (related) interpretations, neither of which was touched on here.

The first was religion.  I was in the process of deconstructing my Christian beliefs when I read the story, and for me it pointed out the horror that the Christian story postulated.  An all-knowing all-powerful god thought that eternal human suffering (hell) was a price worth paying for utopia (heaven) for a select few.  Though it was even worse than the story; at least in Omelas, only one suffered so that everyone else could be free.

The second was the value of rejecting a horrible system rather than embracing it as good enough.  What do you do if you find yourself living in Omelas?  Simply living in it seems wrong, because it requires the suffering of an innocent child.  But saving the child also seems wrong, because that forces everyone else to suffer.  The solution of those who walk away is to recognize that the system is fundamentally flawed and reject it entirely.  If everyone did so, the child could be freed without causing any harm, as there would be no one left in Omelas to benefit from the child's anguish.

I encountered the correct read - about the inability of people to believe in Utopia - more then once although i don't remember where. i think the story do both of those things.

also, i have really boring of an answer: because the story lack details. i have no problem to imagine dath ilan, and without tortured children. 

 

Despite my strong resonance with much of the take in OP, I partly also find "The (simple) meaning" of such a text as a concept a bit of a non-starter anyway. Independently of what all things the author exactly may have had in mind at whichever moment of the writing process, a text remains just that, a text, and then it's instead us who get some inspiration for whichever points/meaning we think we're now reminded or educated about. So in the most important sense, the meaning doesn't exist, it's only us who derive some meaning.

I'd wager many writers have exactly not strictly one very clear and narrowly defined specific point they wanted to convey, but more a fuzzy cloud of +- related thoughts, rather than a simple and clear 'meaning', and exactly in such situations beautiful, deeply feeling and moving texts may come about that we can then dream and ponder about at length, maybe without every finding full agreement. In that sense, Le Guin isn't wrong to agree if we see it as a critique of utilitarianism - if the text almost by definition is simply whatever we see in the text.

[Meta: I hope it's ok to split a comment in two as I think it's two entirely different points]

Partly love this. Biased as I once had a debate where sb claimed 'Omelas obviously critique of utilitarianism' and I disappointedly claimed 'No that's too narrow for that' but was a bit dumbfounded as hadn't quite organized what seems wrong in that simple take of that so deeply moving story. Thanks for providing some relevant points why the story clearly is broader.

One point for which I consider Omelas not at its core a critique of utilitarianism is: The utilitarian-half of me distinctly gets the feeling of Omelas offering an interesting basis for discourse about the theory rather than a clearly intended rebuttal. As follows: To the same degree as the non-utilitarian half of me tells my utilitarian "there you go, clearly you can't claim you like the situation", the utilitarian in me tells the other half "there you go, while you claim you don't like Omelas, but you and everyone else don't even want to blow up real Earth - on which there is obviously a ton of such equally unjustified and pointless, evil suffering plus much less happiness than in Omelas - you exactly proof to accept the very horrible tradeoffs that you claim only me cold terrible utilitarian could be willing to accept"^[1] - or something.

1. ^{^}

   I don't claim this imaginary statement to be very perfectly worded; the gist of it is the point.

Connected to this: Le Guin also wrote "The Lathe of Heaven". I wrote a review of it here on LW. It's a novel that seems entirely about how utopia will always have a cost, even when there's no obvious reason why, as a fundamentally karmic payoff, though it's also not always pessimistic about improvements being possible.

This seems to contradict what I just argued. So what's going on? Here are some options that might partially explain it:

Another possible explanation: both readings are correct, and you're going wrong in assuming that it has to be one or the other.

Maybe Le Guin wanted to point out that utopia with a downside is easier to accept, and then when the process of demonstrating that meant she needed to describe the utopia more concretely, that opened up a chance for her to also make an anti-utilitarianism point at the same time. Or vice versa, she wanted to make a point about ethics originally, and then realized that she could also work in a point about narrative plausibility at the same time.

I think you're overestimating the discourse on Frost.

Try to find any article, paper, or blog post that lays out this reading. I haven’t found one (but there is sometimes someone in the comments who seems to get it).

I will claim part-credit for this article lying in my drafts!

I can prove it by showing the short version I wrote on ACX Discord in February 2025.

2) Ursula Le Guin once asked the reader to imagine a utopia, which she says you would have a hard time believing, and then added a suffering child and asked if it was more believable, knowing that the readers' corrections for rose-tinted glasses are turned wayyyy down if you add an irrelevant negative detail to a story.

(sorry if this ends up formatted oddly— LW is really being quite damn annoying about pasting, which does not help when providing a link and quote!)

Omelas can also be seen as plausibility through imperfection. People have trouble accepting perfection. Imperfection adds a layer of realism that anchors people to a story. Without imperfection, there’s nothing to talk about. 

Reza Aslan cleverly applies the concept to deities, but it works with pretty much everything. Looking gift horses in the mouth is human nature. There’s a direct relationship between an ideal, and the level of effort put into the inquisition the ideal is subjected to in search of the imperfection. There’s also an expectation that the closer something is to utopia, the worse the imperfection will be. 

Mark Twain said “What do they say about a man with no vices?” Churchill said he didn’t trust a man without any vices. Both are saying the same thing. The same thing as Le Guin. Omelas isn’t interesting until suffering is introduced. Omelas is a fantasy that’s wholly unremarkable without the imperfection of the girl’s plight. The imperfection makes it relatable. 

The error in the analysis seems to be the assumption that the value of the story is in the suffering. I don’t think that has to be the case. Omelas is a valid critique of cynicism. Our innate need to find fault simply to give ourselves something to complain about. Our refusal to accept something unless it’s damaged. 

I've always thought this about Omelas, never heard it expressed!