Harrison Bergenon

Harrison Bergeron Question

In his story, Harrison Bergeron, author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. writes of an America where being different is unlawful. His story takes place in the year 2081, focusing on the handicapping of American society. According to the Handicapper General, no single person may be more intelligent, more athletically inclined, or more beautiful than the general public, and those that are are restrained in some simplistic manner. Vonnegut satirizes the faults of present-day American society, showing the imperfections of human reason, and thus conveying his theme of what the social order should not be.

Vonnegut presents a social order in which uniformity is the only way. In the presented world, no person is different in any way. He is showing that through uniformity, comes a society of deformity, in that if there are no persons to be unique, and every person is thus "finally equal", as he says in the introduction, and every value that we hold true as humans, crumbles. Written in 1961, just years after the Red Scare had ended, he parallels the control that the government had put on people. It is very much similar that nobody may be different, because post-World War II, all those that were different, were feared to have been Communists. The same principle, however, is evident here in the story. The absolute control the "H-G" possesses over society trickles down to the same principles. Communism contains standard such as that no single person may be wealthier than others, or may have more power, or any quality that would put that person above any other.

Vonnegut presents this idea, of the uniform society, comically. He constantly stupefies Hazel, mother of Harrison Bergeron, and presents the father as a cowering man. Foe example in the final moments of the story, when Harrison has just been shot after arising in his mind to be supreme, his parents see him shot be the H-G on television,