Narrator and point of view

The story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin is a first-person narration told from the point of view of the narrator who is outside the plot. At first, readers might think the story is told in the third person because of the long description of the procession during the festival of summer. However, soon the first person-narrator makes their presence felt through the use of the first-person pronoun “I”: “I do not know the rules and laws of their society” (p. 36, l. 30).

The narrator plays with the idea of omniscience and limited knowledge, as readers cannot tell for sure how much the narrator knows about Omelas. The narrator seems to invent the story on the spot, using probability verbs such as “would” (p. 37, l. 6) or “...