Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron

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“Harrison Bergeron” was written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in 1961, to make a point to society that they had become too sensitive. I believe that the story was written make people see the error in their way and to do something to change the inevitable future of America if they continued to go down this path.

In “Harrison BergeronKurt Vonnegut, Jr. tells the story of an America in the year 2081 where everyone is equal in every way, mentally and physically. Kurt tells us about handicaps created by the government to keep people with great intelligence, beauty, or athletic ability from being themselves. To keep people equal they created small devices like ear buds that sent out a sharp noise to keep very intelligent people from being able to think, bags full of lead balls, and masks to make everyone equal. George and Hazel Bergeron, the main characters, are ordinary citizens whose fourteen-year-old son was taken to jail for being different from everyone else. Harrison Bergeron was very athletic, handsome, and a genius which in the …show more content…

We’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else” after Hazel tells him that she does not mind if he is not equal to her for a little while referring to George’s handicap bag . Vonnegut also shows us that if the government can regulate people to make everyone equal the government will become corrupt; the author shows us this when he states that the Bergerons’ television had “burned out” after Harrison was killed. This shows that the government had become so powerful it had transitioned from a democracy to more of a communist state as the government was now choosing what would be shown on television. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. gives us a clear idea of his opinion of the things that were occurring in 1961 with the events that take place in “Harrison

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