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Harrison Bergeron Literary Analysis

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The short story “Harrison Bergeron” is about a dystopian society in the year 2084. The short story revolves around the lives of George Bergeron, his wife Hazel Bergeron, and their rebellious son, Harrison Bergeron. There are many literary lenses that one can use to interpret this short story, one in particular is the psychoanalytic lens. By reading a story through a psychoanalytic lens, a person uses the work of Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology to interpret the text they are reading. Through the psychoanalytic lens, the reader is able to compare the characters of Harrison Bergeron to parts of a person’s personality, for example, Harrison Bergeron can be compared to the Id, George can be compared to the ego, and the Handicapper general can be compared to the Superego.
The Id runs on the pleasure principle whose goal is to increase pleasure and decrease pain, like the Id, Harrison’s goal is to break free of the handicaps that he is forced to wear in order to increase the quality of his life. The Id is the basic storehouse for human’s basic needs and drives. Harrison contains such an incredibly strong drive that it causes him to make irrational decisions. One can say that Harrison even suffers from cathexis because of his obsession with rebellion. Similar to the Id, Harrison does not learn from its mistakes. When Harrison …show more content…
The characters show examples of some of Freud’s defense mechanisms like dissociation and reaction formation. The society in “Harrison Bergeron” can even be compared to the Id because society seems to be out of touch reality. ‘Harrison Bergeron”, although a short story, has so much depth to it that it is possible to be able read into the story on a different level. By using a psychoanalytic lens, the readers can grasp a better understanding of the underlying meaning of the short novel “Harrison

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