...The science fiction short story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine in 1961. The year was 2081 in a society where everyone was equal in strength, looks, smartness, quickness, and athleticism. The people who were better than others got handicaps put on them. These handicaps included weights strapped to their bodies, and radio transmitters that scattered the intelligent people’s thoughts. George, Harrison’s father, has 47 pounds worth of weights strapped to his body and a radio transmitter that scatters his thoughts about every 20 seconds. But on the other hand, Harrison’s mother, Hazel has no handicaps because she was considered to have an average intelligence. George and Hazel’s...
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...Thoughts about the future Summaries The Pedestrian: The Pedestrian is a story set in the future, more specifically in 2053. The main character, Leonard Mead is taking a walk in the evening. It’s dark, chilling and silent. The world is boring and lifeless. On his walk in the streets there are absolutely nobody in the streets but him. The only sign of other people are the flickering light from the TVs in the houses. On his way home, a police car stops him. The light from the car blinds him, but he hears the voice of a police officer. The voice asks him to state his business, alone in the streets in the evening. He tries to explain that he’s just walking and has done so every night for years. But the police don’t seem to understand and decides to arrest him. That’s when he realizes that it isn’t an actual policeman; it’s an automated voice. The police car is going to take him to a Psychiatric institution. Harrison Bergeron: In Harrison Bergeron we are introduced to a world where everybody is equal. If it’s necessary, you get applied what’s called handicaps. It means that if you’re fit or strong you get heavy blocks attached to your body and it’s very illegal to remove them. Smart people wear earplugs that make a noise at frequent intervals, which prevent them to do any smart thinking. The story is about George and Hazel Bergeron who is watching television. George is very handicapped with both blocks and earplugs. But Hazel is very average and don’t need any handicaps. They...
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...Nobody is smarter, faster, prettier, or more talented than anyone else. People are restricted from having freedom and being unique by being forced to wear handicaps that hide everyones inner and outer beauty. Citizens are tortured by total equality, they are forced to hide their special attributes that make them individual. George Bergeron, being above average intelligence, must wear a “little mental handicap radio” in his ear so he does not take an unfair advantage of his bran. (Bradbury 2) The government's goal is to use the radio to handicap Georges mentality rate so he cannot use his intelligence to think of creative ideas. The government believes that if people are equal there will be no war or reason to rebel. Along with that idea, ballerinas are performing on the television in front of George, they were burdened with “bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked.” (Bradbury 2) The government is taking away their freedom of being individual with technology that hides who everyone actually is. The dancers cannot use their natural grace, even though it is their job as...
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...book Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works by Kurt Vonnegut. Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works consists of 25 short stories most of which had previously appeared in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Ladies Home Journal, Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Collier’s Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, Esquire, Venture, and Cosmopolitan. The title story appeared in Playboy magazine the same year the collection was released. Eleven of the stories were reprinted from Vonnegut’s 1961 short story collection Canary in a Cat House (Vonnegut). This paper will focus on four futuristic science fiction stories from the collection. These stories, “Welcome to the Monkey House”, “Harrison Bergeron”, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, and “Unready to Wear” all share a dystopian science fiction theme. Science and technology are supposed to make the world a better place, but instead, Vonnegut concludes they only create a new set of problems (Farrell, “Science and Technology in the Works of Kurt Vonnegut”). Television is often a target of satire in much of his fiction from the 1950’s. He describes it as desensitizing and numbing while deceiving the masses (Werlock). Vonnegut uses satire and pessimism throughout these dystopian stories. Satire is a special form of literature that seeks to uncover ridiculous ideas and customs in a society (Mowery). Each story portrays a totalitarian government that proposes an irrational solution...
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...8/3/12 Harrison Bergeron HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away. It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains. George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about. On the television screen were ballerinas. A...
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...to an equitable society. However, in the story “Harrison Bergeron,” Kurt Vonnegut demonstrates to us that enforcing equality in our lives won’t be beneficial. In Vonnegut’s narrative, he enhances his story by including symbolism and imagery to exhibit the contrast between the reality of equality and equity in a society. As an illustration of this idea, Vonnegut includes a large amount of imagery to display...
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...Just about everyone in this world has always wished that things were more equal between people. Imagine if you actually lived in a world that was equal in every aspect. We can see what is like in the story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. He opens with a very telling sentence “The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal”. (Jr.). In this year 2081 their culture values equality so much that everyone is equal in every way. For instance when Hazel suggests that George remove the forty seven pound handicap he replies “If I tried to get away with it….then other people would get away with it…and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else”. (Jr.) In this world of “Harrison Bergeron”,...
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...In the story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , it is 64 years in the future year 2081, and the government is in complete control. Instead of embracing everyone's talents and unique traits they make those talents and traits unusable by giving everyone “handicaps”. These “handicaps” are form basically a form of torture and if you rebel they will punish you, badly. Although it is not equal for everyone, anyone with power does not have any handicaps. The author uses techniques such as parallel structure and sentence fragments. Some effects of these techniques are pacing and fluency, emphasis, and exaggeration. The first technique the author used is parallel structure. A great example of this technique is, “Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else” (1). This technique causes effects like emphasis on the point Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is trying to make about equality among people. This technique also causes exaggeration about the equality in the society they are living in. As a result the reader understands that everyone is “equal” in all aspects. Theses aspects include intelligence, beauty, and strength. These effects show the reader...
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...Today people are doing amazing things and are very talented, but what would happen if the world was all equal and the same. I am reading the book Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut explains in the story that no one is different, everyone is the same and ordinary. There is this one person, Harrison Bergeron, He tries to rebel against the government for making people ordinary. My family and Harrison’s family share lots of similarities and differences about communication, talents, speaking their minds. In the book, George and Harrison doesn't communicate that much because Harrison is locked up in prison. My family on the other hand; communicates with each other on everything. If one needs help, we help each other. When one falls to the ground,...
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...Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 short story Harrison Bergeron takes place in the dystopian future of 2081. The 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the United States Constitution make every American totally equal, with no differences in intelligence, attractiveness, strength, or speed. Americans live in a world where “Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.” These laws are enforced by a particularly Orwellian-sounding officer called the Handicapper General. Harrison Bergeron, the fourteen-year-old titular character, is taken away from his parents. Due to their average intelligence, his parents, George and Hazel, are not fully aware of the tragic events. (In 2081,...
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...ft ceiling above you. But then, the Handicapper General rushes in and ruins your fun by shooting and killing you and your empress. This is what happens to Harrison Bergeron. He wanted freedom, but he had to pay the price of death. In this story, “Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.” Harrison’s parents are watching television and they see Harrison trying to overturn the government. The Handicapper General rushes in and kills him because he wanted to let everyone free. This story shows that freedom is what people want but sometimes it takes risks to get freedom. One of the biggest themes in Harrison Bergeron is the idea of freedom. On page 3, Hanzel is trying to convince George to take some of the lead balls out of his handicap bag because how tired he always is. “If you could just take a few out when you came home from work…” This shows us that George makes it seem that he is already free, even though he has all the handicaps. He makes it seem like we are...
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...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...
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...All Men are Created Equally Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., author of "Harrison Bergeron" perhaps takes America's First Amendment that all men are created equally a little to seriously. His futuristic short story gives the reader a glimpse of what a truly equal society would be like. In Vonnegut's society various constraints are used to handicap and equalize the citizens; earphones that emit piercing noises to distract the thoughts of the gifted, heavy weights to weaken the strong, and hideous masks to hide ones natural beauty. Vonnegut's dystopian world exposes the dangers and disadvantages of a society with complete equality of all citizens portrayed by imagery, satire and a not so happy ending. In the beginning of the story the reader is given a glimpse of a truly equal society. Vonnegut emphasis his view of extreme equality and the role the government plays in enforcing it. The year was...
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...What if everyone was out there to prove themselves, instead of looking for a way to make easy money and just get by? These are the questions that the reader asks after reading about Equality in the novella Anthem. Equality The novella Anthem takes place in an unnamed Collectivist society, where everyone is forced to think the same.Equality strived to be better than the people around him . He becomes motivated to conduct experiments on his lightbulb for other reasons other than to help the society. In the novella Anthem, Equality’s main motivation for conducting his experiments was to rightfully stand out from his peers moving toward becoming an individualist and for him to possibly get a chance to make it into the Home of Scholars. Equality was already standing out from his peers because of his height where he lived.”We are six feet tall, and this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet tall”( Rand 18). Equality was punished for standing out by the council. “ There is evil bones in your bones, Equality 7-2521, for your body has grown beyond the bodies of your brothers”(Rand 18). The Council gave Equality the below average job of being a street sweeper to keep him at the same level of his peers. Being oppressed, Equality finding the lightbulb to conduct experiments on was his prime opportunity to begin to make himself stand off from his peers. Equality trying to conduct these experiments on the light bulb on his own to show he was smarter than most of his...
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...The story “Harrison Bergeron” is about a boy that has supreme talent and is jailed and taken away from his parents. One day Hazel and George Bergeron sit and watch tv. They are watching a performance of ballerinas. The ballerinas littered with handicaps to hide their talent and beauty. All of a sudden the tv program is interrupted by a new bulletin. The news bulletin proclaims that Harrison Bergeron has escaped out of prison and should be considered extremely dangerous. Right then Harrison busts in the studio and appears on stage. He declares to everyone “ I am the emperor, and i will be the greatest of all time” . He then asks for someone to some forward and be his empress. A beautiful ballerina steps forward and takes off her handicaps to join him. They fly up into the air sharing a kiss. Suddenly Diana Moon Glampers rushes into the room with a...
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