Freedom In Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron

“Harrison Bergeron” is a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut and first published in October 1961. It is about a dystopia were everyone is equal in every way. Nobody is smarter than anybody else. Nobody is better looking than anybody else. Nobody is stronger or quicker than anybody else. In this brilliant short story Vonnegut really does change the meaning of what being a different individual is, and how important it can be, and how it leads to one’s personal form of freedom.

Freedom seems to be the hidden meaning of the story, starting when Harrison escapes from jail. In this story’s dystopia, freedom is no longer a base of the story; enforcing the law that makes those who are “above normal” equal to those who are “normal”. It is forced equality by handicapping the above-normal individuals as a response to destroy the concept of competition in all ways. Vonnegut suggests that freedom can be taken away really easily, especially since

And how they seem to be at ease with it. For instance how George says, “I don’t even notice it anymore. It’s just a part of me.” When their son is shot and killed, they feel emotion from it. But this feeling is erased from their mind. The couple cannot even remember the fact that their son was killed in front of them. This builds a type of sadness for the readers, suggesting how important it is not to be equal.

The kind of government authority seen in “Harrison Bergeron” both mimics and mock the way Americans came to see the enemy during the Cold War, which was near its height of distrust and fear in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Also around the time the story was published. Communism as practiced in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Union and in China meant a tyrannical rule without due process of law enforced by secret police and informers, similar to the way the dystopia is portrayed in the