Although the citizens of Omelas and the people of The Crucible attempt to purify society through scapegoating, their actions result in a corrupt society rather than a pure utopia. In LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas,” and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the citizens use the pain and misery of innocent people to fuel the success of their own society. While the people in Omelas are celebrating a luxurious event, the child is secluded in a dark room where it is stripped from all his freedom. Everyone knows about the child and they “peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes” (LeGuin). The citizens know it is unjust for the innocent child to bare these inhumane conditions due to the fact that they are “disgusted” and “frightened.” However, they do nothing to stop the pain…show more content… Instead of offering salvation and sharing the word of god to others, the witch trials caused many to sacrifice innocent lives to save their own. The citizens further corrupt their community by causing the moral few to flee society or suffer from an unjustified death. The citizens of Omelas have mixed feeling towards the treatment of the child; “some of them have come to see it, and some are content merely to know its there”(LeGuin). Those who retain their morals leave the city, so they do not fall into the flawed ideology, and no longer partake in the suffering of the child. In The Crucible, the righteous minority face an unjust death, when Proctor is being pressured to accuse others for his own freedom he proclaims “I have three children - how may I teach them to walk like men in the world, and I sold my friends?”(Miller 130) Proctor acknowledges that scapegoating is morally wrong and goes against society’s ideology; he wants to set a righteous path for his children. However, instead of being rewarded for his integrity, he is punished for doing the virtuous deed as he is hung for maintaining his
