Examine the various ways that the theme of happiness is developed in Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk away from Omelas."

Certainly, the mood of the story begins quite happily. It is the Festival of Summer in the "bright-towered" Omelas. The boats "sparkled with flags" and the swallows "soar[ed]" among the "moss-grown gardens." People stroll outside, and "the procession was a dance" as children dodge "in and out." Everything, and everyone, seems beautiful. The narrator says, "Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?" They are very happy, but they are not "simple folk" either. Their lives are complex and rich. Their city is not a fairy tale, though they lack technologies we enjoy. The narrator explains,

Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that; it doesn't matter. As you like it.

They are not "goody-goody," she is also quick to point out. However, they are well aware of what is necessary to their lives and what is unnecessary, even destructive to their way of life. The narrator assumes that we will not believe in their existence as described, and so she tells us about the miserable and abused child in the closet on whom all their happiness relies.

They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

Happiness, then, as a mature individual is not possible without, at least, the knowledge of unhappiness. Pleasure is not recognizable without knowledge of pain. Joy cannot exist without misery. The child must suffer so that everyone else can realize happiness. It is sad and cruel, but LeGuin develops happiness as something that can only exist when one knows its opposite—when that opposite exists somewhere in the world.