Summary Of Harrison Bergeron

Natalee Gray

Kerryl Lynne Henderson

English 2110 10I

23 April 2017

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

This short story was set in 2081, where everyone is equal. All men, women and children were completely equal; with their looks and intelligence. The more intelligent people had to wear ear pieces to interrupt their thought process and beautiful people had to wear mask to cover their beauty from the rest of the world.

To characterize Hazel the author gave her inner thoughts and described her mental capacity to be less than average, as to where her husband was of a higher mental capacity and was described to be wearing an ear piece that rang in his ear to disrupt his brilliance. In the end of the short story you find Hazel crying only

she cannot remember why and you find George once again confused by the constant noises going off in his head.
In the beginning of the story the author uses words to convey a cheery tone. Going into the second paragraph the author starts to use words like, weren’t quite right and tragic. Leaving the reader open to speculation. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. starts talking about how everyone is equal, something that people today are striving so hard to have. Only he is opening the reader up to the suggestion that everyone being exactly the same to be equal is not something we as a people would be able to create without taking things away from some and burdening others with. Towards the middle of the story the author is trying to convey to us that as a whole we will always be competing with our neighbors; if not through who is the most beautiful than who is smarter. Every person in America thinks they are the smartest and they know everything.
The laws in this story are flawed.

If everyone is the same and no one person is smarter than the other than how as a people does the country evolve? There would be no new inventions and nobody to cure diseases. Who would be the doctors and who would be the workers at McDonalds?

The structure of this short story starts out with the exposition, laying the framework so as the reader we can understand what is about to happen. In the story they start by telling us how everyone is equal so we will be able to understand the climax. The climax in this story would be Harrison appearing on the television and declaring he is the new emperor and choosing a bride and then removing all of his handicaps and those of his new bride and the musicians. It really hits a climax when the Handicap-General bursts into the scene with a gun and kills the new lovers.

It moves on to the falling action when George walks back into the room after all the action on television and sees Hazel crying. It really is heart breaking. That is their son, but because of the handicaps to make them equal they cannot remember what they just watched. The parents of Harrison will never know their son was shot by the general. Which is the person Hazel admires and looks up to; the person she wishes she could be shot and killed her

son.
I do not see any true resolution to the story.

Not is the sense that something was resolved in a positive way. The General kills Harrison for breaking the laws and trying to become the next ruler. In a way that could be construed as conflict resolution. The General saw the conflict and ended it. In her favor no one would be able to register in their brains what was going on. There employs another issue. Who is the president/emperor of this new perfect future? Does that person wear a handicap to make then equal or do they stay without it to think clearly and be able to rule. All of the ideas to put handicaps on people had to come from someone and does that person believe it is right or was it an ignorant person with an idea. “A blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.” Is the creator of these handicaps a blind squirrel? This short story arises so many questions.

It starts out being a nice story, maybe one day we can all be equal; without violence and wars. We could be all the same. Then there would be no conflict in the world, no feminists fighting to be heard, no one would be starving or homeless. In a make believe world all this is

possible.
The story shocked me. I did not see the death of the main characters son coming at all and it makes it even sadder that Hazel is crying about it but cannot convey her feelings to George when he asks her why she was crying. It may have been a sad ending but the author was only trying to convey to the reader that no one person is perfect and perfect worlds do not exist. The author is using the death of someone’s child to help portray the picture that even if everyone was as beautiful and smart as the person next to them there will always be someone who will not agree. You cannot force someone to feel the way you do. Cosmetics can make someone look the way you want them to but not feel the same way you do.
Our generation may not be perfect, but we are all creative and are the future of our society. With all the different thought processes, this could be the year we cure cancer or end global starvation; none of this would be feasible with handicaps on our intelligence.