The Flip Side Of The Argument On Racial And Sexual Equality

The short story, titled "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut takes place in the year 2081. The government has made everyone equal by placing handicaps on the people who are smarter or prettier than the average person. However, this story focuses on one family. The mother and father of the family are watching television, and on television are a number of ballerinas. The father of the family has a handicap while the mother does not. Their son is in jail, when all of a sudden he appears on the television because he has escaped from jail. He rips off all of his handicaps, declares himself emperor and asks the ballerinas which one wants to be his empress. One of them says that she will, and they begin to dance. They begin to float and eventually kiss the ceiling. Just then the handicap general enters the building and shoots both the ballerina and the son. They are dead before they hit the ground. The mother is crying, but she cannot remember why she is crying and the father's handicap goes off so he cannot remember what happened either. The purpose of this short story is to show that everyone is not the same and that "normal" is not desirable. This piece of literature was written in 1961, so the author could have been responding to communism or the fight for racial equality. This piece shows the importance of individuality and using our strengths both for individual people and for groups of people.

I, personally, feel that this short story is discussing the idea of the battle for racial and sexual (men verses women) equality, but I feel as though Vonnegut is flipping the idea of the fight for racial and sexual equality around by making everyone on the earth equal in his story. The reason I feel this is because of the way Vonnegut states all of the pieces that take place in the story. For example, in the very beginning of the story Vonnegut states, "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." This proves that he is not discussing the struggle for racial and sexual equality the way that most authors would. By stating that there are still instances of racial equality happening. Vonnegut is stating that the entire world is equal and this is his way of bringing about awareness of racial and sexual equality.

I also think that Vonnegut is trying to prove that if all of society were equal (as in no battles of racial or sexual equality), there would be chaos and turmoil. For instance, when Vonnegut 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 the Empress were dead before they hit the floor."