Essay On Harrison Bergeron

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “Harrison Bergeron” is an eye-opening piece that touches on the idea of equality among humans in an interesting and unique way. We have seen people throughout history fight for equality, a fight that still continues on to this day. Especially here in America, it seems as though there is always some group somewhere pushing for some kind of equality whether it be racial equality, religious equality, gender equality, etc. Is it really equality that we want though? Or do we just want fairness? I think when many of us say that everyone should be equal, we are insisting that we should all be treated equally and provided with equal opportunities, not that each person should be equal in their amounts of athleticism and attractiveness.

“Equality … should never mean having to abandon human potential to obtain its objectives. In Harrison Bergeron equality demanded a world void of beauty, intelligence, and creativity; even a beautiful voice was not permitted. If that is what it takes to make a fair world, then why be endowed by ones creator with any gifts at all” (“Harrison Bergeron, Is the Quest for Equality Always Fair?”).

Vonnegut, who has realized this, shows us the reality of what our world would come to if we were striving for literal equality rather than fairness. He does this using connotative diction, exaggeration, and irony. As far as his use of connotative diction, Vonnegut takes equality, something typically viewed as being a positive concept, and turns it into a negative one. Vonnegut realized that this creation of a completely equal society is the furthest thing from fair, as well as that it would be more easily achieved by tearing some people down to a certain standard rather than trying to improve people to bring them up to this standard. In “Harrison Bergeron,” this standard is met in many different ways. Those above the standard are given weights to weigh them down, ugly masks to wear, ear pieces that make thinking and functioning normally impossible to do, and whatever else it takes to make them equal to everyone else. These accessories make sure that no one is too strong, too fast, too pretty, too smart, or too much of

anything else. Since each person varies from one another in all of these categories, everyone is handicapped at different amounts, meaning that some people are handicapped far more than others. Some may have to wear forty pounds of weight, a mask, and an ear piece whereas another may just have to wear the five pounds of weight and a mask. An example of this variation among each person is the difference between the characters George and Hazel, both mentally and physically:
“Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And 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 advantage of their brains”.
While the radio brings his mental capacity down to the same level as everyone else, George is also required to wear forty-seven pounds of birdshot padlocked around his neck at all times so that he is not more physically inclined than anyone either. It may seem as though George is quite equipped with handicapping accessories, but George and Hazel’s son Harrison is an entirely different story:
“Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides. Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds. And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
His superiority in so many different areas made him a threat.

However, it was the “suspicion of [him] plotting to overthrow the government” that resulted in him being imprisoned though. When Harrison escaped from prison, he was described in the news broadcast as “a genius and an athlete, [who] is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous” Growing up in the society that is today’s American society, this idea that people are aiming for averageness rather than excellence can seem so absurd. The fact that Harrison’s description as a “genius” and “athlete” was supposed to make people afraid of him, that Hazel’s lack of intelligence and all-around averageness is described as “perfectly average,” and that the ballerina reading the television broadcast apologizes for her voice because it was “a warm, luminous, and timeless melody” can be very difficult to grasp. “Genius” and “athlete” are words of flattery, lack of intelligence is never desired, “average” is an insult, and people on the television are supposed to be have good voices. Or so we thought. By using this negative context and this negative attitude from characters toward equality, Vonnegut successfully creates this new idea where things that we consider to be wonderful and consider to be people’s strengths today are frowned upon and deemed as flaws. Although this all seems so backward and unimaginable, in Carl Mowery’s “An Overview of ‘Harrison Bergeron,’” we are brought to the realization

that, although it may be backward, Vonnegut’s idea is really not as abstract as we might believe it is. Mowery reminds us that “even in [the] 1990s some groups and countries still [tried] to equalize everyone. Some religious cults [required] members to wear similar clothes; the people in power in China often [appeared] in public wearing the same drab clothing; in some colleges and universities grades [had] been 'equalized' so that most all students [got] A's. Vonnegut saw evidence of forced equality around him and believed that it was not good for a country, and certainly not good for an individual.” At our first glimpse of complete equality in the story, we may begin to ponder the idea and weigh some pros and cons, still with the open-mindedness that this idea could be either beneficial or detrimental to a society. As the idea is executed and the story unfolds, the scale begins to tip with the number of cons outweighing the pros. After finishing this story, potentially even sooner, many readers came to the conclusion that this idea would definitely fall under detrimental. Stephen Moore and Peter Ferrara, the authors of the article “The Poverty of Equality,” are among this category of readers. Although their article’s purpose was actually to argue against the idea of trying to make everyone in a society equal in income, the points they made were ones that are also applicable when arguing against the idea of trying to make everyone in a society equal overall. “The goal of a society should not and cannot be to make people equal ..., an impossibility given the individual attributes with which we were each endowed by our creator. It is the opposite of justice and fairness to try to equalize outcomes based on those attributes” (28). Moore and Ferrara also discuss how stripping each person of their beauty, brilliance, talents, and skills is a social injustice because it eliminates any possibility of further growth or progress for the United States, an economic injustice because people can no longer use their brains or skills to score high paying jobs and put money into the economy, as well as a “[violation of] personal liberty” (27-28). It becomes clear that these Vonnegut is aware of these flaws and complications of equality by the way he reiterates them with his use of satire, especially his use of irony and exaggerations, which can be seen throughout the story. We first see this satire right off the bat among the first paragraph with the concept of equality at this time being introduced, “All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution…” On top of being humorous, this exaggeration was included so Vonnegut could display “how idiotic the ‘quest’ for equality has been up until the year 2081… The fact that [Vonnegut] says that there are at least 213 Amendments in the United States, makes them seem like a ‘joke’ by the fact that they are depicted as being extremely easy to change” (“Use of Satire in ‘Harrison Bergeron’”). By doing this, we have now ridiculed the government system of this time may not take those in power seriously throughout the remainder of the story. Another important exaggeration is the exaggeration of Harrison himself. His character is seven feet tall, very strong, very smart, and pretty much everything that this society is trying to get away from. His physical superiority in combination with his attempt to rebel against the equality makes Harrison a great example in showing how there will always be opposing forces. Americans have never sat down and let the government, or in this case the Handicapper General, take away their rights and it is clear that Vonnegut does not believe they ever will. Irony plays a big role in the story considering how unfair this entire system is that is implemented to make things fair. First of all, there is the irony in the Handicapper General, Diane, Moon Glampers and her agents being far more superior in this society where everyone is supposed to be equal. They execute their superiority by not enforcing the handicapping accessory rules on themselves but they are sure to punish anyone who goes against it, including the two-thousand dollar fine and two years’ worth of jail that George mentions for anyone who removes just one lead ball from their weights as well as the harsh way they shoot and kill Harrison for not following the rules. It appears that this is more of a dictatorship, which is about as far from equal as it gets. It is also incredibly ironic that they go through such far-reaching lengths to make everyone feel equal, but that feeling of equality. “The handicaps used for the purpose of keeping everyone "average", only served to make that person's superior attributes even more evident. These devices may have hindered ability, and may have kept the individual's natural beauty from shining through, but it could never hide the fact that these endowments existed” (“Harrison Bergeron, Is the Quest for Equality Always Fair?”) An example of this is when Hazel refers to the weights around George and says, "Go on and rest the bag for a little while. I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while." With all this irony, the exaggerations, and the connotation, the flaws and complications of complete equality are made very clear. Vonnegut also successfully uses these literary devices throughout the story to make those of us who say we want equality quickly reconsider and change our statement to we want fairness. Although we may continue fighting for racial, religious, and gender equality, it is safe to say you will not see many of us fighting for the kind of equality seen in “Harrison Bergeron” anytime soon.