Discuss The Historical Context Of Harrison Bergeron

The Historical Context of “Harrison Bergeron “By Kurt Vonnegut

“Harrison Bergeron” is a short fiction written by Kurt Vonnegut, the story is set in the year 2081, and it talks about a futuristic society where all individuals are equal. No one is cleverer, beautiful or stronger than the other, and if somebody is better than the others, they find themselves compelled by The United States Handicapper General to put on what they call “handicaps” to bring down their abilities to the most basic levels as the others. Throughout the story, Vonnegut expresses a bold and vigorous political and social criticism of some historical events in the US during the 1960s such as the Cold War and Communism, television and American Culture and Civil Rights Movement.

“Harrison Bergeron” was published in 1961 during that period various events were occurring around the globe in overall and in the US in particular, which was engaged in a sequence of political and economic crisis with the communist Soviet Union known as The Cold War.

The fierce conflict between the two powers raised apprehensions in the United States that Communists sympathizers in America might jeopardize the US’s security. Furthermore, the public’s worries about communism were intensified by the growth of communism around the world which convinced Americans that there was an evident danger crawling towards them and endangering their nation and what exaggerated that possibility more is the appearance of figures like The US Senator Joseph R.McCarthy, who was an anticommunist that would accuse people from diverse communities of treason if they diverge with his political viewpoint. The dystopian and futuristic American society referred to in “Harrison Bergeron” operates on communist principals, but in an exaggerated form:” the year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.”, “Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.” In this passage Vonnegut shows how unreasonable such rules can be and how absurd to obtain complete equality unless by crippling the brightest citizens and

bringing their powers down to the level of the “average “people. The story imitates the idea that Americans perceived about communism and the Soviet Union at that point in history where schools introduced courses to pupils such as, Communism Vs. Americanism in order to wage the propaganda war, this paranoid climate was the consequence of many circumstances, one of them is the establishment of a communist government in Cuba by the rebellious Fidel Castro with the support of the USSR .the idea of having a government based on such policies just nine miles away from the US left Americans in an environment of panic . Another notable event linked to the story took place on May 1961, when Newton N.Minow the chairman of the Federal communications commission, delivered a speech where he attacked television by referring to American commercial television programming as a “Vast Wasteland” of destructive programs. Additionally, he stated that television programming was making it “easier” for people and deterring them from producing serious thought and ideas. To highlight this point Vonnegut has clearly demonstrated it in the story where he made the whole plot take place in front of the TV where Hazel Bergeron and her husband George Bergeron, Harrison Bergeron’s parents’ were sitting watching the ballerinas on screen. And because Hazel is a woman with average intelligence and short attention span this prevented her from remembering why she is crying over something sad she saw on TV; her being shot to death ,because she was too distracted by the ballerinas on the screen. That shows how strong the impact of TV is on the brain of average people .Vonnegut also suggest that television in the story played the same role for the average as radios do for handicaps and here we see how the government used TV as a sedative method of preventing people from having serious thought identical to Minow’s statement .

And last but not least, there is Civil Rights Movement, which was a mass popular movement made by African Americans in order to obtain equal opportunities for the basic rights the U.S provides its citizens with. This movement reached its peak around the 1950s and 1960s when not only African Americans, but also whites organized movement to national and local levels. In 1960, The US Congress passed another Civil rights act that authorized federal authorities to ensure that state allowed African Americans to register to vote . Although, this is not precisely related to the story, but we can see that it stands in the background as the issue of equality which was the issue of the time, “ Harrison Bergeron” was written in 1961 near the time of the civil rights movement, so it is specifically referencing the changes in the government to “provide” equivalent rights just as the community stated in the story all people were equal not only before God and the law but equal in every which way. In Vonnegut’s story the smart one must wear a radio on their head that sends disturbing noises; the beautiful must disfigure themselves and so on. The government was torturing its

citizens in order to achieve absolute equality mentally and physically. Vonnegut surely ignored the racial context in the story, but he clearly used this issue in order to portray the fear of white citizens, mostly who feared the federal government would propose schemes that would enforce equality of outcome with African Americans, and felt that desegregating the public schools and other facilities amounted to the same kind of tyranny exposed in the story. In Conclusion, “ Harrison Bergeron” was a way for Kurt Vonnegut to articulate his critical point of view in a satirical way of the most remarking events in the US during the 1960s such as , the Cold War and Communism, Television and American Culture and Civil Rights Movement.