Social Symbolism In Kurt Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron'

Short stories throughout time have come with many different purposes. Authors have used them to entertain readers, to give insight into their own mind, and to make commentaries on society in general in many cases. An author widely renowned for his use of short stories to achieve the latter goal is Kurt Vonnegut, especially known for his social satire “Harrison Bergeron”, which he used as a commentary on both authoritarian governments and people who believed in creating “true” equality through leveling. Many tools are used by those who create short stories in order to achieve their goals and get their messages apart, thought it must be done carefully and quickly as they aren’t granted the same leniency to drag it out as exists with novels. They use the characters to create images and, in cases like Harrison Bergeron and other satirical pieces, to generalize certain aspects of society and demonstrate how they, for the most part, would respond to the situation. Literary assistants are used as well, such as similes, metaphors, imagery, and symbolism. With a short story, there is only really one conflict within the story, and as thus the

Vonnegut sees this as a terrible idea, given that by weakening members of society to achieve equality rather than attempting to improve the weaker links, this will weaken the society and lead to its inevitable crash. Vonnegut uses the story in order to point out his views on the piece, and utilizes each of the story’s few characters in order to make a generalization towards the types of people that would exist in an authoritarian environment such as the one he has created for this