Kurt Vonnegut’s “harrison Bergeron”

Nuwayra Mahreen        

9/5/2014

English 9

Ms. Nichols

        In Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, it is the year 2081; the country is finally living according to America’s first amendment of everyone being created equal.  People who are above average in  the society are required to wear handicaps in their ears, heavy lead balls around their necks, and, under some circumstances, ugly masks to conceal their beauty. Everyone seems to believe that these handicaps are making everything equal and that their world has become a utopia, an ideal and perfect society. Everyone except for Harrison Bergeron, who feel as though the society has not become a utopia, but has instead created a dystopia. A dystopia is a world full of oppression and decline in society, complete government control, misery, and pain. Harrison plans to overthrow the government of America and declares himself Emperor, but before he can put anything to action he is killed by the Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers. Through the character and plot in “Harrison Bergeron”, Kurt Vonnegut portrays a dystopian society.

        The society in “Harrison Bergeron” cannot improve in any academic advances. People with intelligence above average are restrained into thinking like an average person. This makes the society a dystopia. Instead of expanding the advances, the society in the story is ultimately decreasing. Vonnegut states, “… 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 advantages of their brains” (1). People are not allowed to take off their handicaps because they could gain unfair knowledge. But, without knowledge, people cannot advance forward with new discoveries and technologies. The society is stuck in a chaotic world, a dystopia, and cannot move forward because they are unable to make progress.

        In “Harrison Bergeron” people cannot advance or improve because of the tight grasp the government has on their lives. The government is totalitarian; therefore it has control over all of the citizen’s lives. In a dystopia the government also has complete control over the people, making the society in the story a dystopia. The story states, “It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and Empress were dead before they hit the floor” (Vonnegut 6). Diana, who is part of the government, sensed a threat from Harrison and quickly eliminated the threat before he had a chance to overthrow the government because she was afraid she might lose all power over the people. This shows that the people of the government will do anything to stay in control of the people, making it a dystopian society.