Harrison Bergeron Research Paper

Perfect. Having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics. Perfection. The condition, state, or quality of being free from all flaws or defects. Eugenics . The selection of desired heritable characteristics in order to improve future generations. In the late 1800’s, the idea of Eugenics was introduced to the United States by Charles Davenport. Charles Davenport, a scientist in the United States, spread the idea worldwide with full support. In the Unites States, scientists got attached with the idea of creating the perfect race. The perfect human being on the outside was more important than the human itself. Scientists believed with Eugenics , all imperfections that make us humans would be eradicated and he replaced with

perfection. So when everyone's perfect, no one will be.

The short story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt vinaigrette focused on social and political perfection and a quality of beauty, strength, and intelligence.

However, the perfect been in the dystopian short story was not equivalent to perfect in Eugenics . Harrison Bergeron persisted on making everyone equal. Equal in looks, strength, talents, and intelligence, but for the worse. Men and women that had extraordinary talents, strength, looks, and intelligence were brought down by the government to be equal to the men and women that weren’t as talented. In Eugenics , people were sterilized if they were not “normal”. In the early 1900s, American breeders Association focused on “ investigating and reporting on heredity in the human race, and emphasizing the value of superior blood and the men in minutes to society of inferior blood”. Also, in 1869 many states started an act to marriage laws with eugenic criteria, prohibiting anyone who was “epileptic, imbecile or feeble minded” from marrying. It took years for sterilization to become a law in states with one exception. By 1921, California had accounted for 80% of the sterilizations nationwide. Moreover, in only 64 years, California had about 20,000 forced

sterilizations.

America always dreamed for the perfect place. Erase that would be superior than the others. Erase that would only have one skin color, when I color, one hair color etc. America has tried many different ways; Eugenics became an idea that the Nazis found interesting and they adopted it with the Holocaust. America was so attached to the idea of perfection that they didn't look at the diverse cities in the country that would make America great again. America wanted to change the people that were created a little bit different than others. People that were born with no arms, mental illness, and extra fingers were excluded from the perfect picture of America. Americans were killed, sterilized, and deported just to have the perfect race. There will never be a perfect race anywhere in the world.