Harrison Bergeron

Harrison Bergeron

The "Harrison Bergeron" story written, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is a portrayal of a much imagined world where equality exists among all people. It is a seemingly nice notion, but at what price? Equality comes to the people from an amendment to the constitution, enforced by the government's right to control all human intelligence, strength and ability. Although the story was written in 1961, the author projects the time period to the year 2081. It is with single-mindedness that the government attempts to achieve its goal of handicapping the American society. Told from third person point of view, this story gives us an account from the outside looking in.

If the facts and details had been told from the first person point of view this story would come across with a whole different perspective. Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General could surely tell of the difficulties that were endured by the enforcement of the laws. As the head Handicapper General she is in charge of enforcing equality amongst the people.

The General was a strong woman who did her job well. Her responsibilities were that of determining what handicaps one should have. Diana was in control of all society's laws, the level of competition and imagination rest solely in her hands.

The use of handicapping apparatuses played a major role in her abilities to carry out her job. Among those were radio transmitters to ensure thoughts of equal intelligence, weights to ensure equal power in strength, masks to misrepresent beauty and thick glasses to distort ones vision. Diana knew that keeping equality amongst the people repressed their ability to advance. No longer a need to learn, and stuck in the present normalcy, their abilities to challenge the government were subdued.

When Harrison used the television station as a way to free himself,

and others,

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