A Dire Society, a Dire Story

Justin Millerson

Mr. Young

ENG 4U1

18 September 2006

A Dire Society, a Dire Story

Natural curiosity leads people to make predictions on how their country

could be run in the future Whether they are good or bad predictions depends

entirely on the individual. Kurt Vonnegut the Writer in this story, describes what

his idea of the government in the Future would be. Harrison Bergeron is a short

story of a possible government ideology presented in everyday life in the year

2081. The ideology is presented in the United States, a non-communist country

in which this story’s government is loosely based on. The philosophy of the

government demonstrates that all citizens in the country are of equal status in

everyway possible. This is controlled by “handicaps.” Handicaps in this story are

attachments to your body that shade your advantage in anyway to the average

person. The author chose few characters and a short length to exhibit his story.

After reading this story, it is not unfair to say that Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison

Bergeron was unrealistic and was a dire story. The story did not appeal to the

reader for reasons that are simple. The government presented was unfitting for

the United States, the contradiction in the authors writing and the fact of

perplexity. The only understanding in the story is the explanation; it failed to

reach the satisfaction for the reader.

The story Harrison Bergeron showed direness in the way of an unrealistic

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government in the United States. Since the Cold War, the United States has

been a strong anti-communist. The government demonstrated in this story shows

a striking resemblance to communism in how the citizens are portrayed as equal

and also in how there is a higher power controlling the citizens. They do this by

using “handicaps.” This was caused “due to the 211th 212th and 213th

Amendments to the constitution” (Vonnegut 1). A government of this kind in the

United States is very impractical due to the simple fact that the United States is a

liberal nation and shows no traits of a drastic transition. This is a very bad quality

to the story; a story has to be believable in order to please the reader. The story

shows bad qualities in other ways throughout.

Secondly, the story showed bad qualities through the author’s

contradiction in his writing. The author wrote that everybody was finally equal.

This is not true and it is shown in two ways. It is shown through the description of

the Handicap General. It is described that the “Handicap General came in to a

studio with a double barrel ten gage shot gun” (6) shooting and threatening

citizens of a future United States. It is obvious that this Handicap General is the

minority in the equal nation. It is obvious that this General has more power.

Contradiction is also shown within the “equal” citizens. As mentioned before, a

citizen with an advantage was created equal by the handicaps. This quote