The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas | Historical Context

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas Historical Context

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" was first pubbshed in 1973 in New Directions 3. The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of enormous political, social, and cultural upheaval in the United States, and most likely the events of this period influenced Le Guin's writing of the story. America's involvement in the Vietnam War, particularly from 1964 to 1973, caused much domestic unrest. Many young people protested the war, and these demonstrations reached their peak in 1969, when 250,000 people marched in Washington D.C. A year later, on May 4,1970, four students were killed at Kent State University in Ohio by National Guardsmen during a war protest.

The late mid to late 1960s also saw the rise of the "counterculture" in America. A movement that developed largely as a reaction against the war, the counterculture was made up of young people who called themselves hippies or...
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