takes a huge drooz rip

Beyond its crux, the flippancy with which The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' narrator invents the city is the most distinctive aspect of the story to me. There's a reading where the suffering child is optional - only necessary if you can't buy the first two and a half pages - because the narrator is only negotiating with our suspension of disbelief, not telling us about a place that Really Exists. In that way, if you can imagine or accept that this miraculous little city could exist without need of suffering, without any catch, then the child doesn't exist. It's only if you read on (because of zero-sum thinking or narrative necessity or the fact that it's a story and the point is to read on past rhetorical invitations not to) that the child is placed in the cellar. Conditional on the child existing, within that world, there are those that walk away, some of whom presumably envision a better, more just city free of sacrificial eight-year-olds. You like to imagine you'd be one of these…