[robocat]

The child isn't tortured in the original story. You misremember. The child is neglected, ignored and maltreated but the abuse is acts of ommision not commision.

The story doesn't say where the child is from, but it does say the child remembers its mother and how to speak.

The story ends saying that the ones who leave are going somewhere, we know not where nor why (it lightly implies the ones leave because the child is abused, but it could just as easily be they left because they learnt something).

[rcoveson]

Solitary confinement is commonly accepted to be a form of torture, and that usually involves rudimentary sanitation and nourishment. A confined, solitary, starving child living in its own excrement is being tortured, and I defy anybody to argue otherwise.

Also, confinement is not an "act of omission" any more than punching somebody in the face and then leaving them alone forever after is an act of omission.

[robocat]

I think torture means the intent to harm, usually implying pain by force.

The story shows no proactive intent to try and hurt the child for the sake of hurting it.

Yes, obviously neglect and abuse will harm a child, and that is clearly mentioned in the story.

> Solitary confinement is commonly accepted to be a form of torture

Rubbish. Solitary confinement is used in quarantine, mental health and penal settings without being "commonly" accepted as being torture. The purpose isn't to cause harm, although that may be the outcome. Unfortunately many people seem to think that solitary in prison is acceptable, and too many people wouldn't call it abuse. Do people commonly call it torture? I'm sure most of us would call it torture if we had experienced it (I've only been locked up once - not solitary but threatened with it).

Of course if you intend harm, then solitary confinement can be a form of torture.

As Humpty so wisely said, you can make words mean whatever you wish. But using a definition at odds with your audience does hinder communication.

[rcoveson]

> Solitary confinement is used in quarantine...

This is just abuse of the phrase "solitary confinement". Yes, people in quarantine may be confined in solitude, but "solitary confinement" as a phrase has a particular connotation that is not applicable to quarantine.

> ...and penal settings without being "commonly" accepted as being torture.

It is recognized as a form of torture, commonly. The fact that you keep saying otherwise doesn't make it not so[0].

> The purpose isn't to cause harm...

That's an interesting interpretation! Valid, I suppose, but certainly not something you can just assert in passing. The purpose of torturing enemy spies is to get information that might stop a war, which on net reduces harm. Really, is the purpose of anything to cause harm?

In my view, the treatment of the child is purposefully portrayed as unthinkably cruel. It stops short of being graphic; they don't flay the child or stick bamboo shoots under its fingernails. But they do actively confine it; it's strongly implied that they will not permit it to simply leave, or even die. They don't make any effort to clean its living space! They kick it for no reason!

Go re-read the passage that describes the child's living conditions again. I don't know how the author could make it more clear that the arrangement is cruel. It's not like the people were given some absurd set of requirements for prosperity involving a confined child, and then did everything in their power to at least make it easy on the kid. Or, perhaps they have done everything in their power to that effect, but the requirements include cruelty itself. Either way, I'm not seeing how you think it is so incorrect to describe it as torture that you felt the need to directly contradict my use of that word.

If I described the conditions on the transatlantic slave ships as "torture", would you go out of your way to reject my use of that word because of the lack of intent to cause harm? Or would you accept the combination of the abject human misery, the sores, the starvation, the wallowing-in-excrement, the confinement, along with the fact that these conditions were inflicted by fellow humans, as sufficient basis for that descriptor? Because all of those things are true of both the Omelas child and the slave ships, and in neither case is it clear that the sole intent was to harm.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement#Torture