Dysfunctional Equilibrium In America
Americans love the thought of equality; we actually built our country on that grand idea. The questions of gender, color, or religion are now obsolete. What if there are other areas that we should try to balance? I would love to be as handsome as Brad Pitt, and I know that many people would die to have Bill Gate’s intellect. To live in a society where everything is perfect, is a tantalizing dream that we always hope to achieve. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. explored the concept of making strength, beauty, and intelligence an equal affair; therefore, he scrapped all thoughts of individualism, which is another perception that Americans greatly prize. By using irony in Harrison Bergeron, the notion of a utopia that uses sensory details to maintain control is undermined, along with the foreshadow of fatality from depersonalizing an individual.
Irony plays a critical role in the development of Harrison Bergeron because it allows the reader to understand the conditions of the year 2081. The opening paragraph, etched with sarcastic tones, shoves the reader into an egalitarian United States where a narrator interjects comical insights to the situation without blatantly stating personal feelings. Then Hazel Bergeron provides a sardonic wit concerning their lives, and ironically she is not given any handicaps. On the other hand, her husband has forty-seven pounds of birdshot strapped to his neck, and he yields his obedience entirely to the government. The Bergerons’ son, Harrison, has the record number of hindrances since the movement toward equality; therefore, he is the strongest, smartest, and fastest in the United States. When he escapes prison and sheds his handicaps, in his first moment of absolute freedom, his ego becomes a natural obstruction that inhibits his rationality which leads him to act immature and childish. Consequently, he does not take advantage of his aptitude, and Diana Moon Glompers restores equivalence to her society.
Although...
View Full Essay